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Recycling organic material, or biomass, is still not done at the rate of recycling glass, metal, and plastics. In the 1980s and '90s, many municipalities created recycling programs, leading to the growth of dedicated recycling companies. Here's a bin of automatically separated plastic packaged up and ready for sale to a plastic mill, which will use it for raw material. Household recycling rates in the U.S. are about 30 percent.

About 60 percent of household goods can be recycled, and another 30 percent is organic waste.