Trash Talk

Trash talk: boastful and intimidating comments made to one's opponent(s) in a game or sport.  Mohammed I'm-the-Greatest! Ali  was the trash talk poster child.  I think of it as banter - lighthearted and humorous.  Pickleball players trash talk a lot, part of what makes the game fun.

Now that I've lead you astray with a false start, I'll divulge the real subject of this post: trash.  As in garbage, solid waste, refuse.  Well, that's not really it either, but we're getting close.  It's recycling, specifically 'single stream recycling.'  Folks who live in large metro areas are probably familiar with the term; small town dwellers and rural folks, probably not.  I just got up to speed myself because my home town just started doing it.

I'm a strong believer in recycling, been hauling stuff to recycle centers for decades.  No more.  Now, it all goes into a large container, unsorted, and dumped into a truck.  How the devil do they sort and separate such a mixed bag of stuff? you ask.  Okay, maybe you didn't ask, but I did.  The answer is MRF: Materials Recovery Facility.  MRFs are huge buildings that contain a series of conveyor belts to transport materials to a variety of sorting devices that use gravity, magnets and condensed air for sorting.  Here's a picture of one.

It's not 100% automatic, does require some hand sorting.  It's not 100% efficient either.  Critics maintain that pre-sorted recycling results in a lot less landfill material than single stream recycling.  Broken glass is the main culprit.

Here's a video that explains how the materials are sorted.
https://youtu.be/7CFE5tD1CCI

It's entirely possible that a blog post on single stream recycling may not be the most exciting post ever, highly doubtful it'll go viral.  Whatever.  I thought it was interesting.