commingle(d) = 'stuff to recycle'

[Wilson Gray]

When my wife and I moved from Boston back to her hometown of Kingston, PA,
last August, I noticed the use of "Commingled Recyclables" on local
mini-Dumpsters (. i.e. the ones with handles and wheels).

Thanks to your post, Mark, the presence of these unused containers placed
next to full-sized Dumpsters into which people are allowed to toss anything
at all has begun to make a modicum of sense. Since my wife hadn't lived here
in about forty years, this distinction made no more sense to her than it did
to me.

-Wilson

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      commingle(d) = 'stuff to recycle'
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> For a number of years Philadelphia has provided curbside pickup of
> recyclable materials. In the past couple of years the city has been making
> it easier to recycle stuff, instead of throwing it in with the trash, by
> allowing waste paper, plastics, glass, and metal cans to be put out in a
> single container instead of separately. And since they are phasing in this
> "commingled" pickup neighborhood by neighborhood, there's an ongoing
> trickle
> of announcements about it. (Ours was one of the first, and I forget which
> types formerly could not be mixed.)
>
> Here are a few examples, from "about 26,000" raw Google hits on the search
>  commingle* philadelphia recycl*
>
> =====
> City of Philadelphia official document, p. 8, along with other paragraphs
> on
> sanitation and recycling:
> http://mbec.phila.gov/procurement/bids/S1YL66903AD.PDF
>  16. Can the City provide an example of how the Average Market Price
> Formula
> and Base Rate Index is applied?
>  Answer: The Commingled Container index is added to the Newspaper, Mixed
> Paper and Cardboard index and the sum is multiplied by 75%. An example for
> how this value is applied is provided in Section 2.14.2.
>
> University of Pennsylvania:
> http://www.upenn.edu/sustainability/recyclemania.html
> The Climate Action Plan calls on the University to reduce its overall waste
> stream and increase its diversion rate of paper, cardboard, and commingled
> (glass, plastic #1 and #2, and metal) recyclables to 40 percent by 2014.
>
> Vermont Public Radio. (Google's cached snippet has "commingle", but the
> live
> page has "co-mingle".)
> http://www.vpr.net/npr/92913195/
> On a recent Friday morning, Arlington's environmental programs manager,
> Mike
> Clem, showed up at my house to observe my recycling habits. Every week, I
> put all the plastic, metal and glass in a yellow bin. Then I put all the
> paper products out at the curb in paper bags. Clem tells me I can put junk
> mail, even envelopes with windows, cereal boxes and newspapers, all in one
> bag.
>    It turns out there's a name for this system of recycling. It's called
> dual stream. Put all the paper products in one place, then co-mingle all
> the
> rest. Co-mingle is recycle-speak for "throw everything else together."
> =====
>
> Note that the first quotation uses "commingled" as a noun, with "Commingled
> Container index" in parallel with "Newspaper, Mixed Paper and Cardboard
> index".
>
> Walking around my neighborhood, the Penn campus, and in between, I see
> "commingle"* used as a noun, on (often handwritten) signs and stenciled on
> dumpsters, as in
>
>    NO TRASH
> COMMINGLE ONLY
>
> * Or possibly "commingled". I haven't paid attention, but may try to do so
> in the next few weeks.
>
> My guess is that the people who put up such notices haven't encountered
> this
> infrequent word before its use in this program, and that they have not
> unreasonably inferred from context that "commingle(d)" means "mixed
> recyclable materials", as opposed to "trash (that is not for recycling)".
> Cf. "transistor [radio]", if you remember that far back.
>
> m a m
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


Wilson

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