Make recycling mandatory in the state of Minnesota

Every year the state of Minnesota creates 3.2 million tons of trash which is either sent to landfills or burned in incinerators. That includes over 1 million tons of recyclables that end up in the trash. The value of those materials is 312 million, but instead we pay 200 million to dispose of these items. *

Minnesotans would save money on trash disposal, use less landfill space, and incinerate less (and create few toxic emissions) if recycling was mandatory. Additional tax paying jobs would be added to the economy to sort and process the increase in recyclable materials.

The simplest way to enforce mandatory recycling is to not to collect trash if recycling is not also set out. This has worked successfully in Wisconsin for over ten years. (Recycling is mandatory statewide. Trash will not be collected if recyclables are found within garbage bags and/or cans. Recyclables will not be
collected if any wrong items are found in the bag. Violations will be tagged with an explanation of the problem. - page 3 http://www.kenosha.org/departments/waste/LTT.pdf)
Recycling saves money and energy and reduces the amount of toxic chemicals used in the mining process:
Mining processes produce a large amount of waste and use a large amount of fuel to extract ore. Recycling is safer than converting ore into metals, and there is not a need for harsh chemicals to remove the metal from the ore.
"Recycling also saves energy. If aluminum, steel and copper were recycled, the energy used in obtaining metals could be reduced by 70\%, more than the entire energy consumption of Southern Asia, where 25\% of the world population lives. Recycled aluminum saves 95\% of the energy used in mining and processing bauxite (the mineral from which aluminum is extracted)." - http://www.allofus.net/Fetsang.htm

To get one ton of Copper from ore, you need to mine 110 tons of copper ore, where if you recycle the copper you may only need 1.5 tons of recycled material to make 1 ton of copper (assuming that the .5 tons is impurities that will be burned off). http://www.allofus.net/Fetsang.htm
*recyclemoreminnesota.org

Sources
http://www.recyclemoreminnesota.org
http://www.kenosha.org/departments/waste/LTT.pdf
http://www.doitgreen.org/article/home/solid
http://www.allofus.net/Fetsang.htm