There are many different approaches, especially in the blue box program, where individual municipalities are responsible for the design of the program and for deciding what goes in the blue box. That confuses residents when they travel from one municipality to the next. The same is true with our green bin programs. We each decide what goes in our green bin program. We make those decisions based on a number of factors, including the design of our processing equipment and whether or not we can actually process certain materials. One example that comes up over and over is used coffee cups. Some municipalities allow them in the blue box. Some municipalities allow them in the green bin. Some municipalities allow them in neither. It depends on the types of equipment they use. That causes confusion.
There's also confusion between the messages that municipalities give to residents and the messages that retailers give, sometimes right on the package, about the recyclability or compostability of packages.