Baltimore County’s DPWT The Resource newsletter recently featured a great reminder that “Recycling Doesn’t Take a Vacation.” It got me thinking about the many creative recycling programs I’ve come across—both close to home and while traveling. Communities around the world are finding new ways to recover valuable materials, from the familiar collection of paper, cardboard, glass, plastics, and metals to more unexpected items like oyster shells, corks, sneakers, textiles, batteries, cigarette butts, fishing line, and even holiday lights. Moreover, recycling programs continue to evolve as new technologies and markets create opportunities to keep more materials out of landfills. As a result, they are helping keep those materials in the circular economy.
Throughout the rest of the summer, I’ll be sharing photos of interesting recycling containers, collection stations, and innovative material recovery efforts I encounter along the way. I’d love for you to join in! If you’ve spotted an unusual recycling bin or collection program during your travels, share a photo in the comments and tell us where you found it. Let’s see how different communities are giving materials a second life—one recycling container at a time.
On the Go!
Airports are one of busiest places in the world. They are among the most challenging environments for recycling. Airports bring together thousands of people on the move—often in a hurry and carrying food, beverages, packaging, and other disposable materials.
Creating an effective recycling collection system in these spaces is especially difficult. In part, this is because travelers speak many different languages and arrive with different cultural expectations, habits, and levels of familiarity with recycling. Furthermore, what is considered recyclable—and how it is collected—can vary significantly from one country, city, or airport to another.
Even well-intentioned travelers may be unsure which container to use. Colors, symbols, openings, terminology, and the number of material categories can change from one location to the next. However, that uncertainty can quickly lead to contamination, reducing the value of recovered materials. Sometimes, this makes them unsuitable for recycling altogether.
These photographs illustrate the variety of approaches airports use to solve the problem—from multi-stream systems separating glass, paper, plastics and organics, to simpler configurations relying on colors, shaped openings, photographs and universal symbols. They also demonstrate that the collection container itself is an important part of the recycling system: it has only a few seconds to communicate the right choice to a traveler.
Photo caption: Recycling on the go: Airport collection systems demonstrate the challenge of communicating recycling instructions to an international audience. From Reykjavik to Brussels to Chicago and Athens, and from simple two-stream collection to multi-compartment systems, differences in colors, labels, symbols and accepted materials show why achieving clean, uncontaminated recycling in high-traffic public spaces remains a global challenge.