My house is serviced by Waste Management. A company, supposedly, on the forefront of thinking green and working to recycle and minimize pollution. Well, I can tell you guys that you are doing it wrong! I don’t know if this is standard procedure, but I for sure know that other companies, which offer recycling, don’t do it that way.

Here is my problem with them. WM asks its customers to separate recyclables from their garbage into different containers, something that is necessary to make recycling easier. But when they come to pic up my garbage and recyclables, they are both dumped into the same container. To me that does not make any sense. Supposedly they sort out the garbage at their station, but then why would you ask your customers to separate these objects if you are just going to put them back together and then “waste” money to pay someone to separate them again? Other companies have trucks, which have compartments for the different recyclables and waste. Why doesn’t WM have these type of trucks?

I think that combining the recyclables with the garbage, just to separate it again at a later point, ruins much of the potential recyclables, like paper products for example. Many times the garbage bags have juices and liquids in them as well as sharp objects. When they are put together and then compressed inside the truck these bags break and all those liquids flow out soaking into any potential recyclable paper products and thus ruining them.

BTW, WM new has a social network called Greenopolis, which is part of their Think Green educational program.