I know people are shit and it probably only explains a little bit, but that dumpster really should be painted blue. I might not have noticed myself
It’s funny I run condos and it’s incredible how many people go to me “oh, blue is recycling? I didn’t know” recycling has been blue for petty much all my life.
In North America, large dumpsters for apartments and companies have a colour that is just the company colour, such as Green for WM, GFL, Blue for Waste Connections, Republic, other companies can be Red, Brown, White, Cyan, Orange, Yellow or other colours.
The use is typically denoted by a sticker, sign or by spray painted letters.
For residential curbside bins, blue is typical, but some do it differently if it’s separated further into glass, plastic containers and paper/cardboard products. The colours schemes between recyclables and organics is not consistent and varies from city to city.
At work we’ve got a 5 colour recycling system in the hallways:
Blue : plastic
Grey : paper / cardboard
Red : glass
Purple : metal
Yellow : metal and glass, but with consignment (cans bottles, etc)
I understand the consignment bit, but the other 4 colours of recycling is taken by the city. Which has single source recycling. Also the recycling in our cubicles is single source…
We also have a brown bins for organics, buckets for batteries, and boxes for electronics. Plus normal waste too.
If it’s recycling or trash it should always be a common color. I’m used to blue for recycling but we should all agree on a single color. Green to me has always been common trash. Also I hate how recycling isn’t standard. I know reasons why they aren’t but I wish we’d all come together as a country to fix that (among the other 5,000 things).
A common color would maybe help, but the bigger problem is recycling is still a mess of different companies on taking certain things. Plastic is especially problematic. Sometimes cardboard is separate, sometimes it’s all paper, others don’t take glass, some want lids on jars, some no lids, if you want something exotic like Styrofoam or batteries then go fuck yourself. And then there’s electronics…
