An Assortment of Trash

April 25, 2008

The first week back we had a little meeting about how to sort trash. It lasted two hours and that was a brief overview.

There are four basic categories: Burnables, Nonburnables, Plastics, and Recyclables. Recyclables is further divided into Cans, Pet Bottles, Glass Bottles, Metal, Cartons, Old Clothes, and Paper. But paper is further broken down into Cardboard, Newspaper, and Magazines.

Now that’s pretty confusing as it is, but added to it is the fact that things don’t always go into the category you think. For instance, if you eat a piece of candy, what do you do with the plastic wrapper? Well, obviously, it goes into Burnables. What do you do with the small boxes cookies come in? Clearly it goes in Recyclables, with the Magazines. How about Styrofoam? If it’s clean it goes in Plastics, but if it’s dirty it goes in Burnables. Plastic soda bottles go in Pet Bottles, but the caps go in Plastics. If you flatten a soda can, stick it in Nonburnables.

Can you begin to see why it took us two hours just to cover the basics?