S Environmental Protection Agency, more than 50% of the garbage that Americans generate winds up in a landfill.

The good news is recycling and composting rates in America have increased dramatically since the 19 eighties.

The EPA estimates that more than a third of the trash we produce gets recycled or composted.

The bad news is there's still a lot of recyclable material that's thrown away, and what might be the unexpected news is that we've got to pay closer attention to what goes where.

Ah lot of garbage that looks recyclable actually isn't, and it can cause problems for the facilities.

That process is.

You're thinking about putting that paper coffee cups into the recycling bin.

You could be making the planet's waste problem even worse.

Some items that might seem right for recycling actually aren't.

It's called wish cycling, and it's a big problem for waste management companies.

Why well recycling centers collect and sort items, then bundle the matching materials into large bales to sell back to the companies that make new products out of those materials.

If non recyclable trash ends up in those bales, they're considered contaminated, and the entire bail is taken to the dump, wasting hundreds of pounds of quality material.

Some common contaminants are coffee cups, plastic bags, greasy pizza boxes, non recyclable plastics pizza boxes.

Can Onley be recycled if they are not soiled by Greece or food residue?

Plastic bags are not accepted at curbside bins because they clog up the sorting machines.

However, they can be returned to many grocery stores to be properly recycled.

Remember toe.

Look for the recycling symbol on items and check your local guidelines online before trying to recycle something.

This is important because items like glass bottles, Styrofoam and plastics Grade three through seven are not accepted at all recycling centers and could become contaminants.

It's going to take us all a little bit of working together and making an earnest effort to help keep our planet healthy and beautiful.

Mhm.