In my neighborhood trash and recycling are collected separately, on different days, by different entities. On Tuesdays the trash collector drives his little trash shuttle all the way to my garage to empty the trash cans. On Wednesdays, I am required to wheel the recycle bin out to the curb to be collected by the recycling truck.
At first glance the economics would suggest the opposite. The recycling is valuable to the collector, the trash is not, so when bargaining over who has to carry the goods down the driveway, the recycling collector would seem to be in a worse bairgaining position.
But on second thought, it makes perfect sense. Can you see why? For a (admittedly obscure) hint, here is a related fact: another difference between the trash and recycling is that the recycling bin is too small to contain a typical week’s worth of recycling and most households usually have recycling overflowing and stacked next to the bin.
If you are following me on Twitter (and have I suggested recently that you should be following me on Twitter?) you will know the answer. For the rest, follow the jump.
In Cook County where I live, landfill space is extremely scarce and there is a strong public incentive to recycle. Of course my private incentive is significantly smaller (notwithstanding intra-household, non-monetary incentive schemes devised by my wife.)
Separate, curbside collection of recycling makes it transparent who on the block is recycling and who is not. (Bringing out an empty recycle bin doesn’t work because the bin is so small that vigilant recycling will overflow the bin.) This adds to the private incentive to recycle. The trash collectors have no desire for such incentives.
Cheap Talk 
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August 1, 2009 at 10:21 am
PLW
But if the problem is overfull landfills, shouldn’t the solution be to give you a little trash can and make you put it out by the road? Who cares how much recyclable material you use; the key is how much non-recyclable trash you have.
August 1, 2009 at 10:58 am
Javaad Ali
So, what is the answer?
My guess: people have trash bins that are large relative to the amount of trash they produce in one week. As a result, when it comes time to take out the trash, the bin looks empty enough for them to leave off the task until later, but probably not empty enough to hold another seven days worth of trash. So, assuming people procrastinate as expected and that their garbage bins are too small for two weeks worth of trash, they will only carry the trash to the curb when it no longer fits in the bin. At that point, they will be leaving trash along the cub for the garbage collectors to pick up with their hands. Since picking up other people’s trash is gross at best and dangerous at worst, the company is willing to absorb the additional cost of emptying your trash bin regularly to save itself and its employees the potential costs associated with not doing so.
The same reasoning applies for the recycling. Since it is full, you can’t commit to not taking it out to the curb. Since you cannot credibly threaten to withhold another week’s worth of recycling from the collector, they expect you to take it to the curb.
August 3, 2009 at 9:28 am
Sean Crockett
In my neighborhood we have the same pick-up rules for recycling and trash as Jeff. The recycling team FLIES along its route, the garbage team is much, much more deliberate. One reason for different collection rules in recycling vs. trash may be in the collection contracts. Because recycled material is valuable, the city presumably pays much less for collectors to pick up recyclables than trash. Collection is only profitable after delivery, so the collectors want to collect as much material as possible in a given shift, and thus demand recyclables be left at the curb. In my neighborhood the recycle truck doesn’t even stop; it drives slowly down the street as a team of three collectors jog alongside throwing stuff in the truck.
Recyclables are sufficiently light for this model to work. The marginal cost of each house they pass is maybe 5 seconds, for each house they collect from it’s maybe 10-15 seconds. If they had to run behind each house to collect recyclables the MC of each house might go up to 45 seconds on average, so it might very well take 4 times as long to go through the neighborhood if they didn’t demand curbside pickup. Garbage is higher volume and heavier, to collect from behind the houses probably doubles pick-up time rather than quadruplbes it. Curbside pick-up is probably “cheaper” for garbage collectors to provide than recyclers.
A second reason for the difference in collection rules is probably from the taxpayer side. Trash must be collected more frequently, is heavier, and is nasty. Your willingness to pay for someone to deal with it for you is much higher than it is for recyclables.
So if curbside garbage collection costs x and curbside recycle collection costs y, I suspect that backdoor garbage collection costs 2x while backdoor recycle collection costs 4y. Consumers in well-off neighborhoods find the extra x for backdoor garbage collection money well-spent, but are not willing to spend the extra 3y to avoid taking a couple containers of recyclables to the curb every other week.