“Lots of people in the demographic that listens to Odd Lots, educated, smart people, the cocktail party set, think that it makes them sound really smart to say, 'I heard recycling is a scam.' I can't speak for other municipalities. New York City's recycling system is protected by long-term contracts that guarantee beneficial reuse of those materials. If you properly sort a can or bottle in New York City, it will become a new can or bottle or other reusable item.”

So a collection truck, we don't call them garbage trucks because they also pick up recycling and compost, comes by sometime generally between midnight and 8.30 in the morning. Try to get as much of it done before peak rush hour. The trucks are on routes that are optimized for a few things. They hold about 12 to 13 tons of trash each. You want it to get full on its route and you want the route to be completed in a single shift. So they're optimized around those factors. And then once the truck is full or loaded out is the jargon, it's taken to a network of transfer stations. So prior to 2000, It was all taken to the Staten Island landfill. When the landfill closed, the city moved to a waste export model. It was a multi-billion dollar 15-year infrastructure project to build five transfer stations around the city. These are places where the truck comes, it dumps out onto a big floor, the tipping floor, a big floor where a large front-end loader pushes it down holes in the floor into like a shipping container that's underneath. Robotic arms seal up the shipping container. A giant crane puts it on either a barge or a rail car, and it's taken to its final destination outside the city. This is obviously far more environmentally sustainable than an…