Wishcycling Plastics Threatens the Sustainability of Recycling

The state of recycling is being threatened by the large amount of contamination that is making it into the recycling bin.  It’s true that Material Recycling Facilities (MRF’s) make money off of recyclables, but those recyclables have to be collected, sorted, and baled to be a marketable commodity, and there’s a cost associated with those processes.  Adding items to the recycling bin that you think should be recycled, i.e. “wishcycling” won’t actually influence that material to be recycled in the future, it just increases the cost of recycling and makes municipalities question the economics of the maintaining the program.  If the amount of non-recyclable materials (i.e. garbage) being placed in the bin keeps increasing, the economics of recycling stop making cents -see what I did there?

We’ve consolidated a directory of outlets for hard to recycle items here:  https://oeqrecycle.clermontcountyohio.gov/tree/