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My neighbor showed me why my recycling was getting skipped

I had a talk with the guy who drives the recycling truck on my route last Tuesday. He said if you bag your cans and bottles inside a plastic grocery bag, the sorting machine at the plant just dumps the whole thing into the trash. I had been doing that for like 3 years straight. Has anyone else been making this dumb mistake without knowing it?
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2 Comments
ramirez.caleb
I read somewhere that those plastic bags are actually one of the biggest problems for recycling plants. The machines get jammed up with them constantly, and the workers have to shut everything down to pull them out. Your cans and bottles probably just got dumped with the bag because it's faster than trying to separate everything. The real kicker is that a lot of places don't even take plastic grocery bags in the first place. You're supposed to return them to the store drop-off bins instead. Sounds like your neighbor did you a favor, even if it was embarrassing.
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robinwalker
Three years of doing it wrong, that's wild lol.
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