Inside a cavernous warehouse at Durham’s waste and recycling center, a crew of sanitation workers in yellow vests sorted through loads of garbage, collected from homes across the city that Wednesday morning.
They placed each item into one of nearly 30 bins, labeled by what type of plastic, cardboard or aluminum it’s made of. A few things in the trash, they said, could’ve gone into the recycling — an empty bottle of laundry detergent, an Amazon shipping box.
Tossing recyclables into the trash might seem convenient, but as North Carolina’s landfills are running dangerously low on space, it’s becoming a bigger problem, said Muriel Williman, Durham’s senior assistant solid waste manager…