Encouragement without education backfires on recycling efforts

Alok writes: High contamination in recycled garbage, such as plastic bags mixed in with the recyclable plastic waste, are causing major problems for sustainability efforts in US. This has been exposed as a big problem recently, due to recent stricter China import rules on importing waste materials that led to changes in the sourcing pipelines. Cities such as Philadelphia have ended up processing nearly half of the recycling garbage using energy to waste incinerators instead.