A few weeks back, AL reporter John Hult wrote an article about how the State Fair was not recycling. While I thought that needed to be reported, I emailed John and reminded him that many restaurants throughout Sioux Falls don’t recycle (besides cardboard and cooking oil).
If you don’t believe me, just drive around and look into restaurant dumpsters. Not to mention, I have worked in the industry on and off over the past 20 years in Sioux Falls. One place I worked at used to go through a lot of aluminum cans (soda) and didn’t recycle them. A couple of employees, including myself even offered to recycle them for them, and they refused.
There are two reasons I don’t understand why restaurants don’t recycle;
First off, it is very easy. With single stream it is not hard to train employees that aluminum, glass and plastic go in this container and food waste, etc. go in this one.
Secondly, after the city required haulers to have less recycled materials in their landfill loads, you would think they would put pressure on the restaurants to recycle.
I think the city’s sanitation department needs to work with haulers and restaurants to recycle more. While they are concerned about the appearance of private trash cans at city hall, they don’t seem to be too concerned about SF largest retail industry, hospitality not recycling.