Hacker News Reader

Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

Really? Even in Germany where a ton of things go in household recycling bins (including basically all plastics and composites), you'd have to bring ruined clothes to the recycling center separately. Definitely only paper/cardboard in the paper bin.

View on HN

Where I live in the UK we just put the clothes in a bag next to the recycling containers and they get taken away.

They also take away car batteries, car oil, small appliances, batteries etc

In an effort to not have to go to the dump with them, as I didn’t have a car at the time, I actually chopped up two entire sofas with an axe and a knife and recycled them over the space of three months too :)

> as I didn’t have a car at the time, I actually chopped up two entire sofas with an axe and a knife and recycled them over the space of three months too :)

And for sofas that aren't in unsalvagable condition there are furniture recycling projects around the country that will collect old furniture, give it a bit of a sprucing up, and sell it.

Or Craigslist 'Free Stuff'.

I'd rather throw it away than deal with the flakes on Craigslist. It rains here so leaving it on the curb will only ensure it loses whatever residual value it might have held.

Yes indeed. These were perfectly good ones but the furniture salvage people locally didn’t want them and no one came on gumtree or freecycle :(

Ah, that's a shame.

In many places in US you don't have separate bins for paper, plastics, glass and what not, but only one (usually green) recycling bin for everything that is somehow recyclable.

Here in Seattle, at least, recycling has transitioned to blue and green is now used for municipal compost bins. I think SF is the same.

We (Seattle) used to have separate bins in the late 90's or early 00's. A lot smaller total volume than the 96 gal toters, though.

I remember that as a kid in general King county (many of the suburbs of Seattle).

However it's still not enough.

    * More bins for more specific TYPES of plastic
    * Better, machine readable, (BIG) labels
    * Financial incentives (carrot and stick)

I'll elaborate more on that last point. Restaurants should be encouraged to create takeout packaging that is more easily recycled and/or composted. Similarly wrappers, boxes, cups and packets should have a per unit tax for non-environmentally friendly units.

There should also be a push towards the use of glass and metal and paper over plastics. Sturdy glass bottles can be cleaned, thermal blast smoothed and re-used or broken down and recycled completely. Similarly metal lids and cans can also attain a new life with ease.

There's always tradeoffs. If you require people sort at home, more recyclables end up in the trash and/or people missort anyway.

I agree we should incentivize use of more recyclable materials (in place of non-recyclable or more expensive to recycle materials) in general.

Blue in LA as well.

In Japan, I think there were like ten bins, with clear instructions on how each should be used (eg take the label off the plastic bottle before binning it). It was a bit stressful before I got used to it.

Where "everything" may be limited. For example, I just went and looked: I can recycle "recyclable glass, aluminum, cans, plastics and paper".

At least where I lived in Germany, in cities, there were dumpster-sized stand-alone donation bins labeled "Kleidung und Schuhe" (clothing and shoes) everywhere.

It's often far less convenient to get to a recycling center in the US (especially for people without a car) so they do more of their own sorting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com