Finally figured out why my recycling kept getting rejected by the city

For 6 months straight, Seattle kept leaving my bin with a bright orange tag saying 'contamination'. I was rinsing everything, sorting by number, the whole deal. Turns out I was stacking plastic containers inside each other to save space, and apparently that traps moisture and makes them unreadable by the machines. Has anyone else dealt with this dumb rule on stacking shapes?

2 comments

2 Comments

jana1193d ago

Start thinking about how the machines work, it's all about optical scanners reading the shapes and barcodes. When you nest cups or containers together, the scanner sees them as one big blob of plastic instead of separate items. I had the exact same issue with yogurt cups, thought I was being clever stacking them but the city kept tagging my bin. Now I just toss them in loose and make sure they're all facing the same direction so the machines can grab them. It's annoying because it takes up so much more space in the bin but at least the orange tags stopped. Honestly feels like the whole system is designed to trip us up on tiny details like this.

hugoh553d ago

That bit you said about facing them the same direction, that's interesting. I actually heard a podcast with a waste management guy who said the same thing about barcodes and how the machines read them. He mentioned that even when you rinse containers, if the labels are wrinkled or torn, the scanners can't identify the plastic type properly. I never thought about stacking causing issues either, but it makes sense that they'd see it as one piece. What really stuck with me from that podcast was him saying most people think they're helping by doing things like crushing cans or stacking cups, but the sorting machines are actually designed for items in their original shape. It's like the system was built for people who don't think about it at all, and the more you try to be efficient, the more you mess it up.