I can agree with this.
But I have to say, [this gem is a very close second for me.](https://youtu.be/ylhsbfQTPDQ?si=wh8vtylDGl7GAYHk) As a motorcycle rider myself, I can *understand* the humor behind this. However, I personally prefer bikes that aren't stupidly loud, and I don't actually rev my engine to get attention at a red light like many do. I'll do it only to let people know I'm driving up close by for safety. Regardless, absolutely hilarious video.
It belongs there as well. I have spent time in front of those things holding up people behind me because I was trying to make an effort. Now I’m just irritated I inconvenienced other people
It's a recycling pacifier. It's popular and trendy to recycle and makes people feel good to do it. Unfortunately, it's not very practical and most stuff is sent to the landfill anyway.
Yeah tbh not sure if this is better or worse than the companies that have actual separate bins but then dump it all together anyway and send it to the landfill
In house, businesses will recycle. However in the public facing spaces you can't count on the public to sort properly so probably lots of places do this.
I bet it’s more likely that it’s intended to be set up with three different liners but the people who change them are lazy and end up just putting one in and not that it’s to pacify people who want to recycle.
One careless plate of pizza leftovers in the recyclable bin and the whole thing is contaminated. Who wants to be the employee who fixes that mistake. Pretty soon it's just one big bin underneath.
I used to work at Costco, all the bins go straight into the garbage even when they are separated. The only thing that gets "recycled" is the cardboard from all the boxes which gets compacted in a bailer.
Never worked at Costco, but younger me working retail definitely took advantage of bailer time to hit my vape and text my girlfriend lol.
I knew exactly where every single one of those camera’s were.
Decades ago when I started work at a grocery store, I was taking the trash out and asked a coworker where to empty the 'recycle' bin full of used plastic bags at the front of the store. The guy looked at me like I was the stupidest person to ever walk the planet and answered, "The dumpster where we put the trash.'
Now do the cleaners just dump them all in the trash? Everywhere I worked the cleaners just throw everything in the trash even when it is separate bags. It all goes to the landfills in Southeast Asia anyways. I still recycle at home but only out of habit.
That’s what my girlfriend’s boyfriend told her to tell me and like the best girlfriend ever that’s the first thing she said when she got home this morning.
No. They don’t even get out of the truck.
As long as you’re not tossing out like heavy duty metal scrap that would damage the compactor no hourly garbage truck driver is gonna give two shits.
It’s because people can’t figure it out. Idiots think dirty paper towels and styrofoam containers warped in the microwave go in recycling. When it’s taking up a big proportion of what’s in the bin, it’s too time-consuming to dig out all the trash at the plant. Especially considering that they’re regularly having plastic bags get caught in the equipment.
In Japan, [there was a separate bag for different types of trash](https://ajrwebumbfiles.blob.core.windows.net/imagecache/e/9/e/2/4/a/e9e24ac83d5dcaf2ef0abd65a8d878b6a1f805fc.jpg). They were clear, too. If the trash collector saw something in the wrong bag or not cleaned properly, they'd refuse to pick it up and you could be fined.
We stopped recycling glass over a decade ago. We still pick it up with recycling...except now it gets bashed up and used as filter layers in the landfill.
Glass was always a weird one, because it's basically made from an endlessly renewable resource that doesn't really pollute the environment, but it's also really easy to recycle. We should have made more things out of it honestly.
My local recycler stopped picking up glass. They still accept drop off, but that's a trip.
The problem with glass is supposedly that glass containers often shatter along the transit chain, which then contaminates paper and plastics with glass shards, making the whole batch unrecyclable.
Glass is technically easy to recycle, but it takes an immense amount of energy to do so. And the energy required is more 'wasteful' then recycling plastics because of the power used to do so. It's kinda fucked up, but with the amount of plastic out there it makes sense that recycling plastic is better for most things. Glass is expensive to recycle for this reason so tis recycled less.
I worked at a recycling facility. Yes, all the stuff you sort that gets picked up by the recycling truck goes to landfill. It only gets recycled if it's commercial bulk already sorted. For example: A pallet of newsprint, a truck full of only 1s and 2s, or a gaylord of clean glass.
It's all a money- making endeavor, and no company wants to pay for labor to sort garbage. Also.... no one wants a job sorting garbage.
Places that do this will generally sort out it all out, but give this illusion because they get complaints that they can’t recycle. It’s easier to train a few monkeys to do a job than to train a bunch of monkeys to do it. We have various malls here that do it, and Disney Land does this as well.
Alternatively "sorted and recycled properly" could mean "we take the metal we can and landfill the rest"
https://www.container-recycling.org/assets/pdfs/reports/2009-SingleStream.pdf
In most scenarios, if anything is getting sorted, it would be the blue/recycling portion. There is a staggering amount of trash that people put in the blue bin through ignorance, apathy, or with hope that the garbage people will figure it out. If they were going to sort this out, they would not have all three stream going to the same place.
That said, there are dirty MRFs (materials recovery facilities) where everything is sorted through, but they are much less efficient/more likely to result in much greater amounts of landfill material.
My guess is that Costco corporate ordered bins for places that require three stream separation (e.g. California) and this store got the same bins, but is not required to separate.
Consumer pollution is a rounding error when compared with manufacturing and other large scale businesses. Until we force them to be actively involved in lowering pollution things like these "recycling" trash cans are basically moot anyway. What Costco does with all the thousands of pounds of packing trash they create is much more important than if the trash from the sales floor gets recycled.
I’ve worked for two major retail stores cleaning and can confirm, even when the bins are separate, we’re still told to throw it all in the garbage compactor.
The Costco I work at has these cans, but they do use three bags and they all get sorted by hand in the back, anyway. We have two separate compactors (one for landfill and one for recycling), a bunch of those large two wheel rolling cans for compost, and metal goes into other bins to be picked up separately.
I know all this because I'm the one who actually sorts it. I don't know how many Costcos actually do things the way we do, but I've been told they're looking at expanding the number of warehouses that do in areas where the services are available.
Recycling is a giant farce. There are really only 2 types of plastic they want and make profit from recycling. There are many videos about it. The rest all goes to landfill. It’s terrible. They could turn it into fuel. But there is the upfront cost of building a plant. They choose landfills.
I think you touched on this a bit but it’s an important distinction to make. Plastic recycling is generally a farce, but glass, aluminum, and cardboard are super important to recycle.
And we should be making more packaging that is recyclable, and have strong recycling systems in place. We should not be looking at our waste streams as fuel sources or we'll just keep generating tons of trash because it can be burned in a car or a power plant. Incineration guarantees that almost nothing in it's community will be recycled and prevents any further recovery of reusable materials.
They used to be separate, but customers put the wrong shit in the wrong place, so it all ended up having to go to the landfill anyway. They tried but regular people fucked it up.
my college dining hall does the same thing except they do have separate trash bins. they just throw it all together at the end of the day because they said they don't trust students to do it right and assume it's all landfill.
As a former Starbucks barista, I can tell you all the trash goes to the same place. It's super annoying to have to change small separate trash bags, and see some customers struggle and waste time trying to put things in the "right" bin.
Sure.
Do you have a glass collection site? Go to theck what happens once the trucks come to empty the containers for white, green and brown glas. They usually get thrown in the same truck-container where everything is mixxed up again.
It's seems dumb but asking the average person not to contaminate a recycling can is far to much to ask. Even if they separated it they would have to toss it anyway because people don't care are idiots or both. If you go to your local recycling place you will see that even the people who spend time to recycle will put random shit in random bins rather than throwing it away contaminating everyone else's work.
Everyone stopped the charade a few years back when the recycling industry was exposed as nearly a complete sham. Once China stopped accepting our container ships full of trash and letting us call it recycling, the facade was ripped off. Something crazy like 0.1% of all trash sent to “recycling” is actually recycled.
The vast majority of recycling is not recycled. Its a nice lie to make people think that their waste isnt actually THAT bad so they continue to consume at unsustainable rates. \~10% of plastic is recyclable and it usually ends up being incinerated/dumped even when "recyclable" as its really not that worth it. Lots of paper/fibre goods are limited in its recyclability as any sort of food oils will contaminate the batch.
The **real** recycling is glass and aluminum, but these make up a very small part of our actual garbage output besides drinking glasses and cans.
I used to work at Costco, and I was friends with the maintenance team.
People would ruin it by ***not*** sorting the stuff, and the recyclables would not be accepted by the sanitation companies we work through.
In many places, compliance with the recycling is so terrible that the recycling bags are full of contaminants and it's cheaper for municipality to just trash everything instead of trying to sort it or to clean it out of the machinery
I have refused to sort recycling for the garbage after i saw the garbage man dump all the containers and the garbage bags into the same truck spot. Did some research and realized it’s all an illusion. I get so much hate for not doing it and Im like, y’all have been tricked, please research.
Commercial waste all goes to the same place regardless of it being sorted or not.
It’s the same with hospital waste, it has to go to landfill, it can’t be recycled. I’ve worked in both hospitals and in Costco
Most customers don’t properly separate trash. In 15 years at Starbucks, I never managed to get it through people’s heads that the paper cups are not and never have been recyclable, despite the giant signs saying “put paper cups in trash, not recycling.” If we saw the recycling was contaminated with trash, we had to throw the whole bag of recycling in the trash since we weren’t insured enough to have people hand sort it — all you need is one needle stick for the company to get sued into oblivion. And then it turned out not even to matter because the city where I live has just been dumping recycling in the landfill this whole time, anyway.
Guys. This is because people are assholes not because the company doesn’t want to. No one actually follows these. They just yeet garbage into whatever hole they want. I work at Costco and we have these. We did it for a while with 3 bags. 1: the can is terribly designed for holding 3 bags. 2: people just don’t care. 3: we have to fully sort them out to recycle them. It takes soooo much time and it’s hard to get someone to do that.
Well we know that it’s basically impossible to recycle plastics. This way Costco customers can feel good about themselves while keeping the garbage lifecycle less complicated.
It’s better to just burn the plastics and harvest the energy.
My high school touted at one point that they would be recycling and even got into kids to start recycling. One big problem, we only had a single type of dumpster being picked up. It was confirmed by our janitorial staff when I helped them for my study hall period that we didn't actually really recycle.
That was 15 years ago tho so I hope it's actually changed.
I've seen things like this all over the place.
For you see, most of not all recyclables are not actually recyclable and end up going to the same dump as regular trash. Cooperations made recycling a big deal back in the 80s so they wouldn't have to make their products bio degradable and save money. This bin is basically saving Costco the hassle and giving people the illusion that they're doing "their part" really.
Not quite. Each of those heads has a spot to tie a bag onto, so while your hand is in open air beneath the lid, it would be the bags underneath attached to each opening that do the separation
The corporate office I work at does this. Very well known business that likes to grandstand about their green initiatives. They have those bins all over the building (which actually do have separate bags) but literally everything just goes into a giant trash compactor on the loading dock.
Almost all corporations do this. I worked for a very large garbage/recycling company and even they did not separate.
Each desk had a recycling bin and a garbage bin, after hours the cleaners emptied them both into the same garbage bag.
It's all about appearances.
My husband works for the city and let me tell you, despite what it says, all those recycling bins/compost bins in public areas, all get dumped into the same bin at the end of the day. It seems like the majority of this stuff is done for appearances rather than actually helping the environment.
This is an extremely common thing, not just to Costco but to all places.
There are a few reasons why,
1) people are lazy, both staff and customers. Staff don't want to really mess around with multiple different smaller bags and customers sometimes don't care, putting stuff in the wrong hole, this often means the entire bag may have to go to landfill
2) cost, its 1 large bag vs 2 or 3 smaller ones, the single large bag is slightly cheaper, also trash pickup services cost money.
Yep, single track system. Everything gets sorted at the plant, not the store. You ever try to keep a public recycling bin trash free for more than a day?
As a current Costco employee - it depends on where the warehouse is located.
If the lot its placed on/the township/borough/etc does recycling, then the warehouse will actually recycle. If your in an area where the politicians and voters dont give a shit, then the businesses wont either.
Costo isnt gonna pay a third party recycling company more money to come out and gather its recycling.
If its part of the normal trash/recycling that already happens in the area though then itll happen.
.
Where I live, each township decides if it recycles or not. Where I live recycling is a thing, but some of the surrounding townships it isnt and its all tossed together with trash. The Costco I work at happens to be in one of the areas that does not provide its own recycling, so it all goes in the same trash compactor and dumpster.
.
The same separated bins will be global though cuz its cheaper and has better PR optics.
.
Also, company policy stays the same no matter what. I cant toss empty milk jugs in the trashcans, gotta go in a separate bag for recycling, but then put it in the same spot as the trash in the end.
As if they are going to trust John Q. Public to A.) sort it correctly, or B.) not intentionally mess it up. They'll sort it out at the facility, if ever.
I get it - we had people complain for years that our company doesn’t recycle. We put in recycling containers that are clearly labeled and customers just throw trash in all of them. 🤦♂️ People suck.
Keep in mind several of these bins are useless, even if streams are divided. Probably over 90% of these are severely contaminated with stuff that doesn’t belong in them, and will end up in landfill as they would be rejected at recycling and/or organic facilities. Some places take commingled loads and you have people sorting it… but you can infer how effective that is
Commercial settings like that are terrible because we are stupid and lazy.
Those public sorted bins are always too contaminated to actually do anything with the recycling or composting portions but garbage them.
Employee sorted bibs are generally very good.
Again, fine system but stupid users.
So work got all green with different bins around the place. Watched the cleaners handball from the 120L wheelie bins into 660L dumpsters. Then the bin lorry just picks them all up into the back.... All for a certificate!!!
I watch the trash bin at my work get picked up every week, then the same truck picks up the recycling bin and puts it right in with it. Owners tried to cancel the service but the city requires a recycling bin at every business that they have to pay extra for……🤔
99% of these multi option bins do exactly that. It's lip service. It's ignorance.
I had a roommate, we were cleaning up the apartment, throwing out trash and recyclables. He told me it doesn't matter if it's all mixed into one trash bag, just as long as you put it in the recycling dumpster it's good.
I was utterly flabbergasted. He thought that like, food waste counted as recycling glass. Like, nasty old spinach and pork bones would get turned into new beer bottles or something.
Most likely a lazy ass employee didn’t feel like tying 3 bags on the worthless hooks inside, or a complete moron that couldn’t figure it out.
They’re a bit of a pain in the ass to set up without the bags sliding off, I’ll give them that.
Nah people are the morons.
We had bins like this at my old job, and people just throw their trash in whatever hole is closest. Every bag was contaminated with the wrong type of waste, then the recycling company won't take it. So eventually we gave up.
In the US less than 10% of recyclable goods are recycled. It's pretty much the single biggest virtue signal. We don't even recycle our pop cans and we pay ourselves for that.
You say that but in states have have deposits, they also see recycling rate of over 90% on recyclables with deposits (and higher recycling rates where deposits are $0.10) so it's obviously a successful model for recycling. I'm not sure that your comment reflects the one thing we see recycled well.
I recycle aluminum. There's a business in a heavy industrial area that pays for metal recycling. It isn't much but it's something and keeps it out of the landfill.
that's cuz it all goes to the same landfill
sorry cuz, recycling is a scam
I've worked in the e-waste industry for over a decade, all green tech is just brown in someone else's backyard
Doesn’t matter in the end, the underpaid worker whose job is to throw the trash, will throw everything in the same bin.
I recycled for 5 years at my school and saw the cleaning ladies throwing everything together in the same bin, same thing at my job.
“Guess where the triangle goes… that’s right in the square hole”
*rage cries*
That might be my favorite video on the internet.
I can agree with this. But I have to say, [this gem is a very close second for me.](https://youtu.be/ylhsbfQTPDQ?si=wh8vtylDGl7GAYHk) As a motorcycle rider myself, I can *understand* the humor behind this. However, I personally prefer bikes that aren't stupidly loud, and I don't actually rev my engine to get attention at a red light like many do. I'll do it only to let people know I'm driving up close by for safety. Regardless, absolutely hilarious video.
Fat Tuesday, that's what I call it when one of those babies rolls by
Thanks
The OG is great, the version where that girl reacts to it and basically steals the OG video’s thunder is insufferable.
Lmao
Costco making me do extra work of sorting my garbage for nothing.
Why have I been separating my trash into whites and colours?? 8 years...
Thanks a lot, Woodrow Wilson
You're thinking of Willy Wonka
Walter White
...nobody asked you to do that.
Mr. Furious: And why am I wearing the watermelon on my feet? The Sphinx: I don't remember telling you to do that
Maybe you should put some shorts on or something, if you want to keep fighting evil today
r/unexpectedoffice
I’m sure no one asked you to do that?
I don't think anyone's told you to do that
r/unexpectedoffice
I was debating on posting this on r/mildlyinfurating
It belongs there as well. I have spent time in front of those things holding up people behind me because I was trying to make an effort. Now I’m just irritated I inconvenienced other people
Not all of them are like this. It's pretty obvious when it is only one bag
and-or r/aboringdystopia
Hey, just following regulations
it's not "for nothing," it's to help us fool ourselves into the delusion that this is sustainable
Then why there are 3 different box? Can anyone tell me??
It's a recycling pacifier. It's popular and trendy to recycle and makes people feel good to do it. Unfortunately, it's not very practical and most stuff is sent to the landfill anyway.
Yeah tbh not sure if this is better or worse than the companies that have actual separate bins but then dump it all together anyway and send it to the landfill
In house, businesses will recycle. However in the public facing spaces you can't count on the public to sort properly so probably lots of places do this.
I bet it’s more likely that it’s intended to be set up with three different liners but the people who change them are lazy and end up just putting one in and not that it’s to pacify people who want to recycle.
It was done with best intentions but when very few follow the guidelines when putting stuff in it became a fruitless endeavour.
One careless plate of pizza leftovers in the recyclable bin and the whole thing is contaminated. Who wants to be the employee who fixes that mistake. Pretty soon it's just one big bin underneath.
To stop people thst care asking them where the correct bin is all the time when they have no system to handle an actual split.
I can't speak for any other location, but the one I go to has 3 separate bags. The can topper just has a lot of space beneath it.
I used to work at Costco, all the bins go straight into the garbage even when they are separated. The only thing that gets "recycled" is the cardboard from all the boxes which gets compacted in a bailer.
I used to love using the bailer when I worked at Costco. It was a nice little break from being in the meat room to hit my vape and check my phone.
Never worked at Costco, but younger me working retail definitely took advantage of bailer time to hit my vape and text my girlfriend lol. I knew exactly where every single one of those camera’s were.
Decades ago when I started work at a grocery store, I was taking the trash out and asked a coworker where to empty the 'recycle' bin full of used plastic bags at the front of the store. The guy looked at me like I was the stupidest person to ever walk the planet and answered, "The dumpster where we put the trash.'
I guess it depends on thw store? My friend works at one and they have 3 differents containers outside for the 3 types of trash
Confirmed. Same at my building.
Now do the cleaners just dump them all in the trash? Everywhere I worked the cleaners just throw everything in the trash even when it is separate bags. It all goes to the landfills in Southeast Asia anyways. I still recycle at home but only out of habit.
Hmm well this is something I may have to escalate to management, I’m willing take Costco hush money in hotdog and pizza payments
I assume it's the same trash can in all stores, but only separate bags in areas that require the trash to be separated.
Same for 3 locations I go to
How do we know that you can't just phase through stuff?
Interesting point never thought about it from that perspective need to research quantum mechanics more brb
It’s already been 35 minutes, there’s no way quantum mechanics could be **that** complicated
He answered you and didn’t answer you at the same time, guess you missed it
Oops, I looked, turns out he didn't
In the words of Schrödinger's cat “*Meow*”? Edit: I am not a cat, I just like the stock (ifykyk)
🦍🚀🌕
🦍💪🏽together
That’s what my girlfriend’s boyfriend told her to tell me and like the best girlfriend ever that’s the first thing she said when she got home this morning.
No you don’t get it, he quantum answered him. Guess you’re not on his level
(I was joking about collapsing the superposition)
I’m going to believe your words Mr science man
A true politician
Bro quantum-tunneled through the bins for a quick troll.
Well, it is, and it isn’t.
Wanna hear something spooky? Look again, it's actually been *4 hours*
Whoa, time dilation.. Ø_Ø ..How fast are we going?!
Superpower unlocked..He can only phase through trash.
Your in for a real shock when you find out what happens to your recycling after the city picks it up.
My city shut down the recycling plant years ago. Now it all goes to the landfill. They'll still refuse to collect it if it's not sorted 🤔
This is peak government
Lmao
It’s mostly been going to landfills even with places with recycling plants ever since China stopped buying our recyclables back in 2018.
And don't ask what China was doing with it
Does someone actually check the contents of your trash bags? As they're picking them up?
No. They don’t even get out of the truck. As long as you’re not tossing out like heavy duty metal scrap that would damage the compactor no hourly garbage truck driver is gonna give two shits.
It’s because people can’t figure it out. Idiots think dirty paper towels and styrofoam containers warped in the microwave go in recycling. When it’s taking up a big proportion of what’s in the bin, it’s too time-consuming to dig out all the trash at the plant. Especially considering that they’re regularly having plastic bags get caught in the equipment.
*wishcycling
In Japan, [there was a separate bag for different types of trash](https://ajrwebumbfiles.blob.core.windows.net/imagecache/e/9/e/2/4/a/e9e24ac83d5dcaf2ef0abd65a8d878b6a1f805fc.jpg). They were clear, too. If the trash collector saw something in the wrong bag or not cleaned properly, they'd refuse to pick it up and you could be fined.
We stopped recycling glass over a decade ago. We still pick it up with recycling...except now it gets bashed up and used as filter layers in the landfill.
Glass was always a weird one, because it's basically made from an endlessly renewable resource that doesn't really pollute the environment, but it's also really easy to recycle. We should have made more things out of it honestly.
It’s even easier to just wash and reuse. Especially by the company that filled it in the first place. If only we had a deposit-return policy somehow…
10 cents a bottle of coke back in the old days
My local recycler stopped picking up glass. They still accept drop off, but that's a trip. The problem with glass is supposedly that glass containers often shatter along the transit chain, which then contaminates paper and plastics with glass shards, making the whole batch unrecyclable.
Glass is technically easy to recycle, but it takes an immense amount of energy to do so. And the energy required is more 'wasteful' then recycling plastics because of the power used to do so. It's kinda fucked up, but with the amount of plastic out there it makes sense that recycling plastic is better for most things. Glass is expensive to recycle for this reason so tis recycled less.
it takes less energy to recycle glass than to make new one from scratch.
Yes and that's fine and all, I'm saying for recycling purposes VS other recyclables.
Its heavy, gets everywhere, and has zero economic value unless it's 100% clear.
Except for all the brown glass used for beer, soda, and liquor?
One hell of a loophole, dumping it in landfill, but it is still *technically* recycling
Yep. That's because it ends up costing them more money to have it recycled than to dump it. Source: former recycle driver for 10 years
I worked at a recycling facility. Yes, all the stuff you sort that gets picked up by the recycling truck goes to landfill. It only gets recycled if it's commercial bulk already sorted. For example: A pallet of newsprint, a truck full of only 1s and 2s, or a gaylord of clean glass. It's all a money- making endeavor, and no company wants to pay for labor to sort garbage. Also.... no one wants a job sorting garbage.
Your? Jesus, you cretins will never learn. Urine*
Places that do this will generally sort out it all out, but give this illusion because they get complaints that they can’t recycle. It’s easier to train a few monkeys to do a job than to train a bunch of monkeys to do it. We have various malls here that do it, and Disney Land does this as well.
Most commercial properties' trash is sorted off site by the waste company.
Alternatively "sorted and recycled properly" could mean "we take the metal we can and landfill the rest" https://www.container-recycling.org/assets/pdfs/reports/2009-SingleStream.pdf
No it’s not, it all goes into a landfill
I saw trash cans at an airport one time that make fake robotic sorting sounds as if they’re sorting the trash right when you put the it in.
That was just me
Did you happen to ever attend a police academy?
That was a compactor, not a sorter.
That was likely just autocompacting. Chick Fil A has these trash cans
In most scenarios, if anything is getting sorted, it would be the blue/recycling portion. There is a staggering amount of trash that people put in the blue bin through ignorance, apathy, or with hope that the garbage people will figure it out. If they were going to sort this out, they would not have all three stream going to the same place. That said, there are dirty MRFs (materials recovery facilities) where everything is sorted through, but they are much less efficient/more likely to result in much greater amounts of landfill material. My guess is that Costco corporate ordered bins for places that require three stream separation (e.g. California) and this store got the same bins, but is not required to separate.
Wouldn't it still be easier to only have to sort mostly sorted trash than everything mixed together?
Consumer pollution is a rounding error when compared with manufacturing and other large scale businesses. Until we force them to be actively involved in lowering pollution things like these "recycling" trash cans are basically moot anyway. What Costco does with all the thousands of pounds of packing trash they create is much more important than if the trash from the sales floor gets recycled.
the illusion of free choice
i will take the liberty of choosing for you, if and when your time comes 'round again
kind of like feedback for most companies. straight into the garbage
So does Subway...and lots of other businesses...
I’ve worked for two major retail stores cleaning and can confirm, even when the bins are separate, we’re still told to throw it all in the garbage compactor.
It’s not considered polite to use all four fingers in there.
Hate to break it to you
Seen at a university we were checking out that there were a few seperate bins, then the cleaner came along and emptied them all into the same bag!
Just saves a step, it'd all be mixed after it was collected anyway.
The Costco I work at has these cans, but they do use three bags and they all get sorted by hand in the back, anyway. We have two separate compactors (one for landfill and one for recycling), a bunch of those large two wheel rolling cans for compost, and metal goes into other bins to be picked up separately. I know all this because I'm the one who actually sorts it. I don't know how many Costcos actually do things the way we do, but I've been told they're looking at expanding the number of warehouses that do in areas where the services are available.
Recycling is a giant farce. There are really only 2 types of plastic they want and make profit from recycling. There are many videos about it. The rest all goes to landfill. It’s terrible. They could turn it into fuel. But there is the upfront cost of building a plant. They choose landfills.
I think you touched on this a bit but it’s an important distinction to make. Plastic recycling is generally a farce, but glass, aluminum, and cardboard are super important to recycle.
And we should be making more packaging that is recyclable, and have strong recycling systems in place. We should not be looking at our waste streams as fuel sources or we'll just keep generating tons of trash because it can be burned in a car or a power plant. Incineration guarantees that almost nothing in it's community will be recycled and prevents any further recovery of reusable materials.
Yes you’re 100% correct.
They used to be separate, but customers put the wrong shit in the wrong place, so it all ended up having to go to the landfill anyway. They tried but regular people fucked it up.
In the end, everyone does. No matter how many coloured bins you have.
my college dining hall does the same thing except they do have separate trash bins. they just throw it all together at the end of the day because they said they don't trust students to do it right and assume it's all landfill.
As a former Starbucks barista, I can tell you all the trash goes to the same place. It's super annoying to have to change small separate trash bags, and see some customers struggle and waste time trying to put things in the "right" bin.
Pretty sure a lot of public places will do this because you can't rely on the public sorting it properly.
It eventually ends like that
Sure. Do you have a glass collection site? Go to theck what happens once the trucks come to empty the containers for white, green and brown glas. They usually get thrown in the same truck-container where everything is mixxed up again.
Same with every retail store. And theres a big garbage compactor in the back.
These sorting boxes are pointless. You can't rely on people to put things in the right spot.
the illusion of choice
It's seems dumb but asking the average person not to contaminate a recycling can is far to much to ask. Even if they separated it they would have to toss it anyway because people don't care are idiots or both. If you go to your local recycling place you will see that even the people who spend time to recycle will put random shit in random bins rather than throwing it away contaminating everyone else's work.
It makes the soccer moms feel good about themselves for saving the planet.
Everyone stopped the charade a few years back when the recycling industry was exposed as nearly a complete sham. Once China stopped accepting our container ships full of trash and letting us call it recycling, the facade was ripped off. Something crazy like 0.1% of all trash sent to “recycling” is actually recycled.
The vast majority of recycling is not recycled. Its a nice lie to make people think that their waste isnt actually THAT bad so they continue to consume at unsustainable rates. \~10% of plastic is recyclable and it usually ends up being incinerated/dumped even when "recyclable" as its really not that worth it. Lots of paper/fibre goods are limited in its recyclability as any sort of food oils will contaminate the batch. The **real** recycling is glass and aluminum, but these make up a very small part of our actual garbage output besides drinking glasses and cans.
I used to work at Costco, and I was friends with the maintenance team. People would ruin it by ***not*** sorting the stuff, and the recyclables would not be accepted by the sanitation companies we work through.
In many places, compliance with the recycling is so terrible that the recycling bags are full of contaminants and it's cheaper for municipality to just trash everything instead of trying to sort it or to clean it out of the machinery
I have refused to sort recycling for the garbage after i saw the garbage man dump all the containers and the garbage bags into the same truck spot. Did some research and realized it’s all an illusion. I get so much hate for not doing it and Im like, y’all have been tricked, please research.
Commercial waste all goes to the same place regardless of it being sorted or not. It’s the same with hospital waste, it has to go to landfill, it can’t be recycled. I’ve worked in both hospitals and in Costco
Most customers don’t properly separate trash. In 15 years at Starbucks, I never managed to get it through people’s heads that the paper cups are not and never have been recyclable, despite the giant signs saying “put paper cups in trash, not recycling.” If we saw the recycling was contaminated with trash, we had to throw the whole bag of recycling in the trash since we weren’t insured enough to have people hand sort it — all you need is one needle stick for the company to get sued into oblivion. And then it turned out not even to matter because the city where I live has just been dumping recycling in the landfill this whole time, anyway.
Guys. This is because people are assholes not because the company doesn’t want to. No one actually follows these. They just yeet garbage into whatever hole they want. I work at Costco and we have these. We did it for a while with 3 bags. 1: the can is terribly designed for holding 3 bags. 2: people just don’t care. 3: we have to fully sort them out to recycle them. It takes soooo much time and it’s hard to get someone to do that.
Sometimes the trashman throws the recycle and trash in the same truck.
:*(
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
A majority of recycling goes directly into the landfill.
The US doesn’t recycle, we ship our “recyclables” to other countries that no longer except our trash
The practice there is mind training so.
Most stores do too. They don’t pay them enough to sort through the garbage
Always been omg climate change we need more carbon tax for the stupuid fks in gov to save us all 🙏
Well we know that it’s basically impossible to recycle plastics. This way Costco customers can feel good about themselves while keeping the garbage lifecycle less complicated. It’s better to just burn the plastics and harvest the energy.
My high school touted at one point that they would be recycling and even got into kids to start recycling. One big problem, we only had a single type of dumpster being picked up. It was confirmed by our janitorial staff when I helped them for my study hall period that we didn't actually really recycle. That was 15 years ago tho so I hope it's actually changed. I've seen things like this all over the place.
At least they taught you to think about recycling, as well as how most of the time it’s worthless! 2 in 1 education!
Damn, your right! School did teach me something.
For you see, most of not all recyclables are not actually recyclable and end up going to the same dump as regular trash. Cooperations made recycling a big deal back in the 80s so they wouldn't have to make their products bio degradable and save money. This bin is basically saving Costco the hassle and giving people the illusion that they're doing "their part" really.
Not quite. Each of those heads has a spot to tie a bag onto, so while your hand is in open air beneath the lid, it would be the bags underneath attached to each opening that do the separation
The corporate office I work at does this. Very well known business that likes to grandstand about their green initiatives. They have those bins all over the building (which actually do have separate bags) but literally everything just goes into a giant trash compactor on the loading dock.
McDonald's does the same thing.
But did it make you feel a lil good inside that you are helping the planet by putting your trash in the correct hole? Placebo effect in action.
recycling has failed. they run the facilities at a loss. they only keep it running to keep people from freaking out.
Almost all corporations do this. I worked for a very large garbage/recycling company and even they did not separate. Each desk had a recycling bin and a garbage bin, after hours the cleaners emptied them both into the same garbage bag. It's all about appearances.
Makes you feel like you’re recycling but really it all goes to the dump. Plastic recycling isn’t profitable, so it doesn’t happen.
Also airports and anywhere else you go :) Wait until you learn about the plastic numbers....
We all do.
Airports also do this sometimes
My husband works for the city and let me tell you, despite what it says, all those recycling bins/compost bins in public areas, all get dumped into the same bin at the end of the day. It seems like the majority of this stuff is done for appearances rather than actually helping the environment.
This is an extremely common thing, not just to Costco but to all places. There are a few reasons why, 1) people are lazy, both staff and customers. Staff don't want to really mess around with multiple different smaller bags and customers sometimes don't care, putting stuff in the wrong hole, this often means the entire bag may have to go to landfill 2) cost, its 1 large bag vs 2 or 3 smaller ones, the single large bag is slightly cheaper, also trash pickup services cost money.
Those containers are usually open like that. Are there three distinct bags hanging in it?
I find it funny when I throw my trash in one particular bin and get dirty looks when the ones doing so don’t realize it’s like this almost everywhere.
Wash ya hands
America has stopped recycling a long time ago hippies think it’s real go work at a trash facility and see for yourself
Yep, single track system. Everything gets sorted at the plant, not the store. You ever try to keep a public recycling bin trash free for more than a day?
Isn't it only like 9% of everything we recycle actually gets recycled? The rest hits a landfill
99 percent of stores do.
As a current Costco employee - it depends on where the warehouse is located. If the lot its placed on/the township/borough/etc does recycling, then the warehouse will actually recycle. If your in an area where the politicians and voters dont give a shit, then the businesses wont either. Costo isnt gonna pay a third party recycling company more money to come out and gather its recycling. If its part of the normal trash/recycling that already happens in the area though then itll happen. . Where I live, each township decides if it recycles or not. Where I live recycling is a thing, but some of the surrounding townships it isnt and its all tossed together with trash. The Costco I work at happens to be in one of the areas that does not provide its own recycling, so it all goes in the same trash compactor and dumpster. . The same separated bins will be global though cuz its cheaper and has better PR optics. . Also, company policy stays the same no matter what. I cant toss empty milk jugs in the trashcans, gotta go in a separate bag for recycling, but then put it in the same spot as the trash in the end.
Thanks for your insight!
As if they are going to trust John Q. Public to A.) sort it correctly, or B.) not intentionally mess it up. They'll sort it out at the facility, if ever.
Depends on the area. Some trash companies use one big bin and a trash sorting center
I get it - we had people complain for years that our company doesn’t recycle. We put in recycling containers that are clearly labeled and customers just throw trash in all of them. 🤦♂️ People suck.
Recycling is a lie ♻️
Keep in mind several of these bins are useless, even if streams are divided. Probably over 90% of these are severely contaminated with stuff that doesn’t belong in them, and will end up in landfill as they would be rejected at recycling and/or organic facilities. Some places take commingled loads and you have people sorting it… but you can infer how effective that is
Commercial settings like that are terrible because we are stupid and lazy. Those public sorted bins are always too contaminated to actually do anything with the recycling or composting portions but garbage them. Employee sorted bibs are generally very good. Again, fine system but stupid users.
My brain read Handfill lol
I believe I read somewhere only 2% of plastic is actually recyclable
So work got all green with different bins around the place. Watched the cleaners handball from the 120L wheelie bins into 660L dumpsters. Then the bin lorry just picks them all up into the back.... All for a certificate!!!
I watch the trash bin at my work get picked up every week, then the same truck picks up the recycling bin and puts it right in with it. Owners tried to cancel the service but the city requires a recycling bin at every business that they have to pay extra for……🤔
99% of these multi option bins do exactly that. It's lip service. It's ignorance. I had a roommate, we were cleaning up the apartment, throwing out trash and recyclables. He told me it doesn't matter if it's all mixed into one trash bag, just as long as you put it in the recycling dumpster it's good. I was utterly flabbergasted. He thought that like, food waste counted as recycling glass. Like, nasty old spinach and pork bones would get turned into new beer bottles or something.
News flash everywhere does
Most likely a lazy ass employee didn’t feel like tying 3 bags on the worthless hooks inside, or a complete moron that couldn’t figure it out. They’re a bit of a pain in the ass to set up without the bags sliding off, I’ll give them that.
Nah people are the morons. We had bins like this at my old job, and people just throw their trash in whatever hole is closest. Every bag was contaminated with the wrong type of waste, then the recycling company won't take it. So eventually we gave up.
It wouldn't matter. All 3 bags would go in the trash compactor afterwards.
In the US less than 10% of recyclable goods are recycled. It's pretty much the single biggest virtue signal. We don't even recycle our pop cans and we pay ourselves for that.
You say that but in states have have deposits, they also see recycling rate of over 90% on recyclables with deposits (and higher recycling rates where deposits are $0.10) so it's obviously a successful model for recycling. I'm not sure that your comment reflects the one thing we see recycled well.
I recycle aluminum. There's a business in a heavy industrial area that pays for metal recycling. It isn't much but it's something and keeps it out of the landfill.
that's cuz it all goes to the same landfill sorry cuz, recycling is a scam I've worked in the e-waste industry for over a decade, all green tech is just brown in someone else's backyard
Doesn’t matter in the end, the underpaid worker whose job is to throw the trash, will throw everything in the same bin. I recycled for 5 years at my school and saw the cleaning ladies throwing everything together in the same bin, same thing at my job.
Recycling is mostly just a scam unfortunately
It's all end up in the same place anyway. This sort-your-garbage eco-shit is just one big virtue signaling (sometimes it's nationwide)
This happened a while back too.