commingle(d) = 'stuff to recycle'

[Dan Goncharoff]

Why do you "hope that's not entirely what's going on in Philadelphia"??

In my community in Central New Jersey, they commingle glass, plastic and
newsprint.

DanG

On 7/18/2010 10:41 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok<aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: commingle(d) = 'stuff to recycle'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>    I hope that's not entirely what's going on in Philadelphia. Most
> Boston suburban towns have had recycling by type of recyclable since the
> early 1990s. Sometime later (before 2000), many started gathering all
> recyclables except newsprint and cardboard in a single bin, usually
> labeled "Commingle" or "Commingles".  (But not all--some suburbs and, I
> believe, Boston proper , still collect separately.) I've heard some
> locals refer to the recyclables as "commingables". But paper/cardboard
> are not a part of that, nor are non-can metals, liquids (motor oil,
> battery acid), mercury-laden batteries, etc. It's basically a single bin
> for glass, plastic, drink cans and food cans. Different locations have
> different plastic collected--some go 1-4, others 1-6. This is quite
> different from what they used to do, which was sort all plastic and
> metal cans separately (aluminum separate from "tin"), and glass
> separated by color. In Europe, glass is still separated by color.
>
>       VS-)
>
> On 7/18/2010 10:02 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>
>> 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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