How come fast food restaurants are not forced to recycle plastic waste?

They definitley should recycle… but are the rest of us forced to? They only place I ever feel forced into recycling is at Whole Foods.

The “enforcing of “forcing” recycling would need to be implemented at the county gov’t level…This is a GREAT question to pose to your local County head of recycling, jca.

in canada everyone recycles.

what do you think is in that burger? bits o’ plastic.

They definitely should, but the burden of recycling is actually a cost so perhaps they don’t want to burden businesses with excess costs.
But it costs to cart garbage as well and from what I understand it may actually be cheaper to separate recyclables. It still surprises me that my town has an enforced recycling program of glass, plastic, cardboard and newspaper but they actually have to pay a company to take it away. That company goes onto sell the recyclables for processing! The carting company gets paid twice and we have to pay the town in taxes! It’s absurd. But then again, this is NY and carting is quite “organized”. If you don’t use the right carting company, you may end up getting yourself recycled.

A whole bunch of the plastic used in the foodservice industry is polystyrene (PS), and recyclers generally don’t want to mess with PS that comes from this source. Post-consumer PS has to be very clean to be recycled, and PS from food joints is too contaminated.

From The American Chemistry Council: “Currently, post-consumer food service polystyrene packaging is not recycled in a significant way”

@Likeradar: Lol, I feel so judged if I don’t make the effort to recycle at the Whole Foods in Greenwich Village.

@TitsMcGhee
You of all people should know the importance. You’ve scene the other borough called Staten Island the landfill. And where are they shipping garbage to now? Kentucky? Do you know they sink barges of garbage in the middle of the ocean? Way too much waste and not enough recycling.

@TitsMcGhee At the one here, they often have an employee standing by the trash cans and recycling bins to tell you where to put what! I’ve seen people chastised when they try to dump everything in the bin marked “landfill”!

When considering whether or not to implement recycling, there are things that must be considered. One big one is how clean the incoming plastic will be – and I don’t think a lot of fast food customers are the sort of people who are going to be very willing to wash it all off before dumping it in the bin.

Also, there must be some way to recycle the stuff – someone willing to cart it away and make it into something else, or get it to someone who can. In my area, that hasn’t proven feasible, as there is no municipal recycling of plastic other that #1 and #2. Even if places wanted to collect it, there’s nowhere for them to send it.

From a customer’s-eye view, recycling is as simple as throwing it into the bin and then it’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind. But if there’s nothing that a business can do with the waste, they’re just going to throw it into the same dumpster as the rest of the trash.

(At my Whole Foods out here, customer pressure to recycle was so great that they finally gave in to some of it. It enhances that shine on the thin green veneer they have going.)

Well in San Francisco they are required to recycle. No more styrofoam and plastic. Which means consumers have twice as much paper for our recycling bins.