That is pure laziness of whoever is responsible for puting the bags there.
Either there is a support bracket for two separate bags on the underside if that lid or the trash bin originally had two separate buckets that were taken away.
nah its not whoever's putting the bags in, it's either management deciding it's too inefficient to deal with two streams, or the people using the bins weren't capable of separating so just threw it wherever and so it all ended up mixed anyway
Also a lot of municipal waste systems just don't pick up general recycling from commercial buildings. Usually just one dumpster for trash and one for cardboard.
What usually happens is that people are uncultured pigs and don't separate. So the trash ends up being mixed anyway. After a few years of that, they decide there's no point in separating.
Or it's well known most places don't actually recycle.
My previous employer just put signs on all the trash cans that they were processed for recycling after collecting. That always sounded like bullshit.
It’s called “single stream recycling”. We have it where I live. I wish I could have confidence in any recycling these days. Too many stories of separated trash all ending up in the dump anyway.
Schrödingers bin
Protest Art or not being paid enough?
Just where each bin goes at the end of the pipeline. They streamlined it for efficiency.
This is one bin with one volume inside. The lid might have been designed for a bin with two separate volumes inside and some worker who doesn't care put it in the wrong bin or an artist made the lid to protest ineffective, green washed recycling efforts.
Neoliberal greenwashing go brrr
What does this even mean? Recycling doesn't happen anyway.
It was an obtuse, lazy and (in hindsight) now very funny joke.
"Neoliberal" because one of the key ideological aspects of neoliberalism is the emphasis on individual responsibility. The big example that comes to mind is how the phrase "carbon footprint" was coined and popularised by oil companies as part of an advertising campaign to shift responsibility for climate change from fossil fuel companies to individual consumers.
"Greenwashing" was getting at the bullshit around recycling (which you also highlight in your comment). Often this isn't as blatant as it is here: even if there were two bags, it's likely that very little, if any, of the "recycling" bag would actually be recycled, and that the effort spent in separating recycling from regular trash is wasted energy that only perpetuates the feeling of doing something positive for the environment.
I found the image striking because although it isn't hard to spot that there's only one bag and that it doesn't matter which hole someone throws their rubbish, I think it's likely that someone passing by quickly wouldn't notice this (especially if opaque bin bags were used). This is offensive to me because I'm finding that many people nowadays are struggling with chronic decision fatigue due to being worn down by the modern attention economy, and I consider the "personal responsibility" facet of climate change PR to be a facet of this. That's what caused me to comment, but I didn't know how to capture what I wanted to convey in a quick and straightforward manner, so I went for the lazy reply that, in hindsight, didn't add anything meaningful to the conversation. I hope this is clearer, despite lacking in brevity
I'm sure they'll be really mad about the sorting when they burn it all on a beach in Turkey
