How California Created a Trash Crisis By Tricking Residents 

One challenge with recycling is that different towns have different rules, whether it is via sorting (or lack of) or what is considered okay for recycling. This means anything we learn online might be wrong for our local town, so we should always check with what the local rules are. Heck, even a town a few kilometres away may have different rules.

Great information in your video ! In my state and most states, recycling is a misnomer ! They only recycle certain types of plastic, and it "must" be clean, or not acceptable ! They only except certain kinds of bottles. You must "never" put styrofoam in the recycle bin, or your in big trouble. Any electric or electronics, "must" be dropped off way across town, somewhere special ! Nah, it's ALL a big joke to me. Sometimes it makes me want to through EVERYTHING in the TRASH bin, but we pay extra for the "PRIVILAGE" of recycling... Go green, Go broke !

This is a great video. How is this channel so small?

first, a funny thing about these 3 trash cans is that, sometimes, they all go into the same dumpster and then the landfill. second, "Compost" should only take in organics, like left over food. and nothing else. No biodegradable cups/forks/plates, they are made to degrade in landfills over years, not months in compost. No cardboard/paper with prints, as some printing ink has heavy metal that we do not want in our food. third, "Recyclables" should only take in Clean-ED material. else, contamination de-values all other cleaned material to "landfill" quality. fourth, when in doubt, landfill. else, wishful recycling only leads to more overhead and renders other's effort, worthless. examples to follow: Japan, Germany, etc. note: they are not perfect, but they are on the right track. summary: recycling is a generational problem. we need to train everyone starting from Kindergarten. we need to create Financial Incentive for recycling business to thrive. we need to include the cost of recycling into the cost of production for the product. we need to do so much more, than three options at the end of a meal. But we are lazy, we do not want to change, we do not want to spend more money, we would rather pass on the problem to the next generation, as our previous generation has done to us.

The big problem with plastics recycling is contamination. It is difficult and expensive to clean plastics to a point where you can create a fairly pure stream of recycled plastic. Any contamination -- bits of metal, paper, food waste, the wrong kind of plastic -- makes the recycled plastic behave in undesirable ways and manufacturers won't buy it. The recycled plastic resin has to be fairly pure, and ensuring that it is usually ends up costing more than manufacturing virgin resin. Since there isn't a good economic reason to use recycled plastic, it ends up being pure virtue signaling by the manufacturer. Another problem with plastics recycling is aging. As plastic ages, it degrades through oxidation and exposure to ultraviolet light, and volatile compounds in the plastic evaporate away. This all serves to contaminate the recycled resin, leaving a product that just isn't as workable or strong as virgin resin. Paper recycling also suffers from the contamination problem. Besides, every time paper is recycled, the fibers break down further and further. This means that paper cannot be continuously recycled; at some point the extremely short fibers become contamination themselves! I think the concern over landfills is way overblown. A modern landfill is a great place to contain waste; they actually protect the environment better than other methods of disposal and, in some ways, protect the environment better than recycling the materials (which uses a lot more energy and releases harmful chemicals). Now, I'm a fan of recycling, but only where it makes sense. Glass and metal can be infinitely recycled. Paper and plastic cannot, and the economics of recycling must not be ignored.

I’ve been known to wishcycle things I thought should be recyclable but aren’t. It’s hard when I don’t want something I got but didn’t want (primarily packaging) to be buried forever. I like the idea of labeling it as landfill, but we’ve got a lot of work to do to create products that can be recycled or composted, from the manufacturer first & foremost!

hey man, your vids are really neat and I think you deserve more subs, but one mildly jarring aspect of the filmography(?) is those jumpcuts you do, the scene on the rocks at the bay and the benches in the park felt like they took away more than they gave to the videos presentation. I noticed a similar thing with the part titlecards in your Shen Yun video too. Regardless of that, keep up the good work, see you at a 100k :)

When you always see that at least 1 neighbor in the streets overflows his recycle trash bin with regular trash it makes you wonder why to go through the pain of recycling since everything will be mixed and messed up in the dumpster truck.

Great video!

Thanks. Now it makes sense!

germany here: potato chip bag -> recycling (yellow sack/bin) pizza carton if not too much soiled paper or trash. can: return to store for deposit pringles can: yellow sack or paper. plastic container yellow sack. napkin -> trash . But recently they revealed that not all recycling yellow sacks are recycled and are mostly thermically used eg burned. So naionwide they pulled the wool over our eyes.

The bigger problem I’ve always had with this is what’s worse for the environment. 1 truck picking everything up and taking it to the landfill, or 3 trucks picking up 3 different commodities that have to go all over town to dump off stuff that usually gets thrown away anyway?

Great video with amazing info. Something different. Same things over here as well how they treat with trash. I was wondering the same like you mention in your video about trash. Too much plastic nowdays we using it most of the plastics items/ materials we cannot recycle.

For such a small youtuber, great video

Where I live, the only thing in your intro that could be put in the recycling was the aluminum soda can. We don't have curbside composting, but I'm guessing the napkin and the pizza box are compostable in the Bay Area (here, they'd be landfilled, because food contaminated paper isn't recyclable). The Pringles can and plastic clamshell are definitely landfill material.

excellent video, new subscriber

A pro soccer stadium i have season tickets has a 3 choice trash can .18,000 people rushing to get out of the stadium are not stopping to sort trash.Again just trying to look good

Good quality content. Keep it up my dude. Background music is a little loud.

The current waste collection here in San Francisco might not always be perfect, but I'd say it's the best and most developed here in the US which I can say firsthand. 😀👍💯

Very nice🎉❤

As far as that napkin in compost, I disagree. Imagine a load of that getting dumped in some farmers field and somebody's garden, which is where compost ends up. Would you want to eat produce from that field? But I dig your videos!!!

Pringles can gets shredded at the scrap yard. The paper will be taken to landfill as "fluff" and metal will be sent to be melted

F**k, I am still confused. I saw this title, and was like, "Ah, yeah, Adam will get to the bottom of this." As a habitual rule-follower, I break the "Law" when it comes to the disposal of trash, outside of our home. In our home city, Roseville, we are able to throw everything in ONE trash can, and Waste Management separates it at it's facility. Easy peasy. When we approach these three receptacles, I am like, "f**k it." Landfill? Compost?

Past the halfway mark and still engaged with the video. There are similar bins here in Hampton roads VA. They're always full of misorganized items.

New Jersey burned New Yorks garbage for years to supply power to the city. Maybe we should give it a try. While we are reducing wastes start going to universal glass and cardboard or easy breakdown containers.

Find out who is making money off this.

This explanation is an example of how complicated the trash system is and reason why people don't care. I couldn't stand to watch but 5 minutes of this video. This video has too many fillers in it to stretch it to the 10+ minute mark.

What can I do about this problem? Not live in California. I think it's to a point that a wall should be built around the state and nobody should be allowed to leave. You voted for it, you live with it.

Them city folks make trash in bin very complex for no reason.

Well-intentioned? No. Not in any way, shape or form. Unless, of course, you consider petty tyranny and the abuse of governmental authority over citizens to be a good thing.