Our South Carolina neighborhood has green cans for garbage and blue cans for recycling. All our neighbors dutifully separate their garbage. We don’t, and we don’t for a very specific reason. What I discovered a couple of years ago is that, while different trucks drive around collecting blue and green cans on garbage day, at the end of the shift, the trucks dump all the garbage into the same landfill. It’s a scam that, according to my local representative, makes people feel good about themselves.

When I lived in Marin County, California, we also had to separate our garbage. That wasn’t surprising, though, given that Marin County is one of the most hardcore Democrat regions in America. There, it wasn’t voluntary, with municipal codes mandating separation, a mandate enforced with financial penalties. Since I left California, the state got into the action, too.

It turns out, though, that in Tiburon, California, the garbage collectors haven’t gotten the message. This wonderful video shows that, while good citizens dutifully separate their trash according to complex instructions carefully written out on the garbage cans, the efficient trash collectors are unimpressed. Everything goes into the same bin, then to the same truck, and from there to the same landfill:

This is Tiburon, California

Here residents can be fined up to $500 for not separating their trash when disposing of it

As you can see when the city comes to pick it up, it’s all thrown in one bin and taken to the landfill

Amazing pic.twitter.com/O8Jk31i5GE

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) June 12, 2025

In both Marin and my local South Carolina county, if you really do want to recycle, you can drive to your local recycling facility and drop off your garbage (usually electronics and large household items). Do-gooding takes some effort on your part, though. It’s so much easier to wheel out your two cans (or, in California, three cans) once a week and feel the virtue flow through your veins that you’re saving the planet.

Many years ago, Penn & Teller, on their one-time “Bullsh*t!” show, did a segment on the recycling scam. That segment is not available today, but I distinctly remember two things: One, they were able to show that, in the name of virtue, leftist do-gooders would accept up to eight cans for separating their domestic trash, and two, that modern landfills are incredibly safe. They are not the stinking mountains of the third world but, instead, are tomorrow’s well-engineered green hills.

Image: X screen grab.