My city now mandates by law that we have to put recyclable materials in the recycling bin and compost in the green bin. You can and will get fined if you don’t and they do check, for households at least, because the vast majority of restaurants, offices, hell city-owned public places like parks, transit stations, libraries, etc do not have a green bin and many don’t even have a recycling bin. I’ve directly been told to just throw it in the trash. Biodegradable packaging is useless 99% of the time because there is no compost bin to put it in and they end up in the landfill anyway.
It’s what I like to call environmental theatre and pinning the burden of waste sorting entirely on the individual instead of seeing it as an infrastructure and access problem requiring government action. Not even a lot of action either, just buy some dollar store trash cans and put them in places since you already have a comprehensive city-wide recycling and compost collection program.
My city now mandates by law that we have to put recyclable materials in the recycling bin and compost in the green bin. You can and will get fined if you don’t and they do check, for households at least, because the vast majority of restaurants, offices, hell city-owned public places like parks, transit stations, libraries, etc do not have a green bin and many don’t even have a recycling bin. I’ve directly been told to just throw it in the trash. Biodegradable packaging is useless 99% of the time because there is no compost bin to put it in and they end up in the landfill anyway.
It’s what I like to call environmental theatre and pinning the burden of waste sorting entirely on the individual instead of seeing it as an infrastructure and access problem requiring government action. Not even a lot of action either, just buy some dollar store trash cans and put them in places since you already have a comprehensive city-wide recycling and compost collection program.