Does sorting our garbage really matter?

Question

I visited the local recycling center and the local garbage processing center. Two separate businesses. One picks up the recycled garbage can contents and the other company picks up the regular trash cans on garbage day. We have two trash cans.

The local recycling center collects all of the recycled trash that home owners sort out and put into recycling containers. We get a bill for these services. The recycling company then sells the goods and makes money.

During a tour the garbage processing center said that they liked it when people did not sort the garbage because they have machines that sort it out for them. I saw the machines that separated the recycled goods from the trash. They then sell the recycled goods for a profit.

Why should we separate our garbage for the recycling center and get charged for it when the garbage processing center does the same thing? Is it like this everywhere? Does anyone in the garbage business know?

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Answer 1

the organic material people leave in the trash is responsible for 70% of landfill contamination ,and this in the end pollutes ground water flows

Whilst organic material is the easiest to take care of ,if one makes a compost heap

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Answer 2

No.  It is solely about inconveniencing homeowners- many of the recycling operations are actually worse for the environment than incineration or landfill.  The most benign way to dispose of trash would be to separate the metals, burn the rest, recover the heat produced by generating electricity, then use the ashes to make cement.