DC's Not Recycling the Recycling Bins They Promised to Recycle

A big chunk of Washington, D.C.'s recycling bins — you know, the containers used to keep plastic bottles out of the trash — are winding up in — you guessed it — the trash.

The Washington Post reported: "City officials admitted Tuesday that sanitation crews dumped at least 132 truckloads of plastic bins — a third of the more than 16,000 old cans collected last week — alongside city waste and hauled them all off to Virginia to be incinerated."

D.C.'s mayor, Democrat Vincent Gray, had previously promised that all the bins would be recycled.

“It’s an embarrassment — it’s Trash-CanGate,” said D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh. “The cans were rushed out right before the election . . . and this is the continuing byproduct of a badly initiated and badly run program.”

The replacement of the city's trash and recycling containers, rolled out feverishly ahead of last month's primary election, cost $9 million and was the first time in a decade that the District's receptacles have been comprehensively replaced.

The revelation that recycling bins were being trashed came on the heels of other bizarre bits of news, including the arrest of a local artist for trying to turn old bins into flowerpots.

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