You throw it in the bin, roll it out to the curb and the truck picks it up.
But what exactly happens to Austin's garbage?
We've gotten lots of questions about the city's trash, recycling and compost, so the week of April 17, we answered as many of your garbage questions as possible.
It was Garbage Week on KUT News — like Shark Week, but with no sharks and more garbage.
We traced the path of the junk Austin makes, including how your food scraps get turned into garden soil, how much of the stuff in the blue bins actually gets recycled and how we can all do trash disposal better.
We want more questions, too. If you have questions about trash in Austin, use the form below and we'll do our best to answer them.
We also want to share your strategies for reducing the amount of trash you produce! Go here to send us your tips!
-
By collecting food scraps and yard waste for compost, you save them from a landfill. -
The city's bulk pickup program collects large items that can’t fit inside a regular trash bin a few times a year in select neighborhoods. -
Garbage Humans of ATX started with a group of friends volunteering to pick up trash. Now, they plan regular cleanups in parks around Austin. -
Only a small fraction of plastic waste in the U.S. ends up being recycled. The Plastic Reduction Project wants to help people in Austin rely less on the plastic containers, forks, cups and bags we use once and then toss out. -
Every year, the City of Austin collects hundreds of thousands of tons of trash from residents through its curbside collection service. But what happens to all of this trash after the city collects it? -
Every week banana peels, coffee grounds, moldy strawberries and pizza boxes are placed in green bins and rolled out to the street as part of the city's residential composting program. -
Plastic in the U.S. is largely going unrecycled, but the city says that's not so for the plastic we put in the blue bins. -
Austin City Council passed an ambitious plan in 2011 to divert most of the city's waste from landfills by 2040. Despite recycling and composting strategies, we're nowhere near where we should be.
