My neighbor's blue bin is full of plastic bags again and I finally figured out why that keeps happening

Andrew Scott · 2026-10-10T01:10:03.33528+00:00

I walked past my neighbor's recycling bin on Cedar Street yesterday morning and it was packed to the lid with plastic grocery bags, which our city stopped taking curbside back in 2022. I used to think he was just lazy about it, but then I caught him at the mailbox and asked. Turns out he grew up in a town where you tossed everything in one bin, and nobody ever told him the rules changed. He said the city sent one mailer about it, and he figured that was just a reminder, not a whole new set of rules. That got me looking at my own habits, and I realized I had been rinsing out peanut butter jars for two years for no reason, since our plant doesn't even need them clean anymore. The real problem is that recycling rules shift every couple of years and the only way most people hear about it is word of mouth. So now I print out the current list from the county site and stick it inside the lid of my bin, and I handed a copy to him too. Does your area do anything better than a mailer to get the word out when the rules change?

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My neighbor's blue bin is full of plastic bags again and I finally figured out why that keeps happening | Climate Action - The Community Guide