In my city in the midwest US we just have to sort into two bins: paper and everything else. They sort out the metal, glass and plastic after picking up. It's super convenient and a truck picks it up from our house just like the trash truck. I'll admit we didn't recycle very often until we moved to this city. But when it's this easy, most people take advantage of it. There's not much we can't recycle. I bought two blue bins that we keep in the garage near the door which is around the corner from our kitchen so it's easy to pitch things into either container. We'll often have one sack of trash and one sack of plastic/glass/metal and a box full of paper/cardboard.
We also have a fairly big tumbling composter that came with the house in our yard. Someone told me that there was some kind of voucher program before we moved there to get them for free or cheap. IDK if they still do it. We bought a can on Amazon that has a built-in carbon filter that keeps it smelling fresh and we keep that under the sink. Then at the end of the day we'll empty the can into the compost and flip it over. Made great fertilizer for my back yard which was really patchy. I spread that around, put down seed and it looks great now. Also good for mixing into flower beds and gardens.
Just want to be clear that I'm not trying to brag at all. I'm not sure how motivated I would be if I didn't have access to this service, although I do care more about the environment than I used to. We didn't recycle for years, and didn't compost since we lived in apartments. But I wish more cities offered service like this. It makes it easy for families like ours to reduce our impact. And as an Apple user and shareholder, I like seeing them also trying to reduce their impact. It's good for everyone to do their part. I think it really starts with education. I think most reasonable people, if taught about their impact on the environment and how they can mitigate it, would take additional steps to help out. For me it has nothing to do with climate change, which I don't always completely buy into and think naturally fluctuates, and everything to do with just being a decent person cleaning up after myself. It really hit me when I had my first kid a couple years ago. I don't want to leave this place trashy for her and her kids, and I also want to teach her by example. I don't know for sure if climate change is real, but it doesn't matter either way. A cleaner, healthier environment is always better. We need to take care of our only home.
