The Streets Department swears they are no longer throwing recycling en masse onto their garbage trucks.

Now, I don't trust them any more than you do. They said they stopped doing this already several years ago (right after the Inquirer ran an expose about it). Fine. And then the pandemic happened, and there have been so many ups and downs with short staffing and recycling only being picked up every other week, and then they get behind after big storms and the like, so they still did it now and then. Fine. They have supposedly staffed up now and are not as critically short-handed.

If you see them throwing recycling onto a trash truck today, in November 2022, that's something you should document and report (i.e., take a photo so there is a record of the time and date.) Otherwise, you're just recycling (ha) old news to help keep cynicism and apathy alive.

But you're also telling on yourself here:

>our paper bags filled with greasy pizza boxes, discarded mail, and single-use plastic bottles end up spilled all over the street whenever the wind blows

You're not supposed to put out your recycling in paper bags. If you're doing this, you're not holding up your end.

I absolutely think the city makes it ridiculously hard to get recycling bins, and I have to say I don't think I've ever seen one of the lidded bins they supposedly started giving out some time ago. The city is really not holding up their end by making inadequate provision of recycling bins.

But OTOH, most of us can afford to obtain some kind of plastic bin for our recycling. There's no excuse for using paper bags except laziness and/or willful ignorance.