Reduce, reuse, recycle.

The easy-to-remember slogan, along with the iconic logo of three green arrows chasing each other around Earth, still sticks in the minds of residents across the country.

The public-awareness campaign, albeit simple, originated out of the 1970s, and helped fuel a movement to become more environmentally conscious. The slogan still carries weight today, but the last part, “recycle,” has become more complicated, leaving Massachusetts residents confused and frustrated.

“Suddenly, the collectors stopped picking up recyclables,” said Sheila Holland, a Malden resident. “No notice, no explanation, but week after week, they skipped collecting them. Finally I went down to the Public Works Department to find out what was going on.”

A town employee told Holland the city had switched to a “dual-stream” system.

“I didn’t know watersheds had anything to do with recycling collection,” Holland said.

Dual-stream does not in fact relate to water systems, but rather is a model of recycling where different types of material is separated into different containers; paper in one bin, plastic in the other.

The approach differs from “single-stream” recycling, which allows residents to combine or comingle different recyclables into the same bin; paper and plastic together.

Ultimately, municipal leaders decide how they want to do it, but the process from there is typically the same. Residents drag the recycling to the curb, a hauling company takes it away to a recycling center where it’s processed and sold as a commodity on the global market.

The end part, however, is largely what’s complicating the system. The United States’ biggest buyer of recyclables, China, earlier this year announced it would purchase fewer recyclable goods. The Asian country, which purchased about 40 percent of recyclables from Massachusetts, also said the goods it continues to purchase must be much cleaner than what it accepted in the past.

The impact has squeezed the bottom line of those in the U.S. recycling industry, which in turn impacts the haulers, the municipalities and ultimately the taxpayers. There are roughly 2,000 recycling business employing more than 13,000 people in Massachusetts, according to the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection.

Some municipalities, like Malden, pay a flat fee, regardless of the global market price of paper or plastic. Robert Knox Jr., Malden public works director, estimates the flat-fee contract is saving the city roughly $1 million more on an annual basis than some of the neighboring communities.

“Recycling is very difficult right now, and the market is very bad,” Knox explained. “As part of our contract, our hauler owns the recycling for the good or bad, whether the market is up or down.”

The city’s 20-year contract with the Peabody waste-management company JRM Hauling and Recycling Services is helping the community cost-wise, although residents have complained about a decline in services. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

On the expense side, other municipalities are not so lucky.

In Sherborn, a shipment of recyclables is costing the town about 30 percent more than it would to haul it straight to the trash. For most cities and towns, the difference of 30 percent can make elected officials think seriously about weighing environmental goals with financial realities.

“We don’t want to do that. We care about the environment. But we need help,” Town Manager David Williams told the State House News Service.

Sherborn has a single-stream system, meaning residents commingle recyclables into a single bin. Since China has become pickier about what it will buy, however, a lot of the single-stream recycling -- unless residents are hyper-meticulous about cleaning and sorting -- ends up in a landfill or incinerator anyway.

“I like that we have single-stream recycling, but I’m not confident that it actually ends up being recycled because it contains so many non-recyclable products,” said Erin McConaughey, a Medford resident. “People are still confused about what can and can’t be recycled.”

Indeed, nearly five decades of after “reduce, reuse, recycle” first started, uncertainty still swirls around what can and cannot go into the recycling bin. And the mix-up is getting expensive.

In May, The Patriot Ledger reported Braintree went from earning $20 a ton for recyclable material to paying $50 a ton to have it removed, fueled largely by reduced demand and more non-recyclable contamination.

To complicate matters further, The Ardagh Group, an Irish packaging company that owned a bottle manufacturing plant in Milford, recently closed operations, citing a decline in revenue from the beer industry. The closure has had a significant impact on regional outlets’ ability to collect recyclable glass, which the company purchased and repurposed into bottles.

In Wellesley, the town went from earning about $4 to $10 per ton for glass recyclables to spending between $40 and $50 per ton.

To try and address the overarching issues, state officials in August announced Massachusetts would disperse $2.6 million in recycling grants to 247 cities and towns in an effort to strengthen recycling programs. It also introduced a new initiative called “Recycle Smart,” designed to teach residents what’s allowed in the recycling bin and what’s not.

“We know that Massachusetts residents are committed to recycling, but many don’t realize that when they throw items that are not accepted for recycling in their recycling bins and simply hope that they get recycled, they are causing more harm than good,” said Edward Hsieh, executive director of MassRecycle, a nonprofit focused on recycling and waste reduction across the state.

Whether the concerted effort will yield any measurable improvement to the overall system, however, will largely be proven by the practical experience of Massachusetts residents and whether cities and towns can balance recycling budgets.

Wicked Local interviewed more than two dozen residents about recycling from across the state. Issues varied somewhat community to community, and a handful of residents detailed some positive experiences. Overall, however, responses were mostly filled with frustration.

“Honestly, the whole system is just a nightmare,” Holland said.

Eli Sherman is an investigative and in-depth reporter at Wicked Local and GateHouse Media. Email him at esherman@wickedlocal.com, or follow him on Twitter @Eli_Sherman.