Greetings urban dwellers! Today, I’ll be sharing a post on the reality of corporate recycling efforts to manage wastes and land pollution. I came across this video on TikTok and it was shocking to me. Here’s the clip: https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSe7YYU9m/

In the clip, it shows a man who decides to recycle his used plastic cup in a Subway restaurant. In front of him, there were 2 holes on the bin, one indicative for unrecycled wastes and another for recycling. However, he opens the bottom of the bin only to find out both holes lead to the same waste bin. In other words, Subway was merely demonstrating a performative gesture in recycling and is giving customers the illusion of choice. Ultimately, there was no effort in recycling the wastes at all.

This got me thinking if this kind of corporate scheme is widely adopted and I tried to scour the internet for more of such incidents. Fortunately, there were not many other cases like this. However I came across this interesting article on San Francisco’s (again) Macdonalds’ rubbish bin having cameras inside. Apparently, there are companies like Compology that develops software and technology to ensure that unrecyclable materials are not mixed with recyclables. So how this works is simply the camera has censors to monitor the wastes that enter recycling bins and if there are trash bags inside that do not belong there, the camera will send a notification to the recycling truck that is on route to collect so that they can remove the rubbish. From the article, this monitoring advancement has a success of removing unrecyclable trash in the recycling bin by 80%.

Camera with censor placed in recycling industrial bins in San Francisco (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/18/tech/compology-artificial-intelligence/index.html)

From what I’ve learned today is that recycling is a useful method to handle wastes and prevent land pollution in the urban realm. However, this comes with tangible and intangible costs. Businesses that are really keen to recycle and make a conscious effort of recycling should uphold integrity in their policies. Making a change requires efforts from all.

You Live in Urban, You Fight for Urban

Your metropollution warrior,

BriChua

Reference:

Metz, R. (2020, December 18). Here’s why some McDonald’s restaurants are putting cameras in their dumpsters. CNN. Retrieved February 17, 2022, from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/18/tech/compology-artificial-intelligence/index.html