A recycling bin is an implied promise: Give me your water bottle, your pizza box, your crumpled newspaper and the lid to your coffee cup, and I will magically transform your cast-offs into fleece, fiberfill, paper towels and playground equipment.

But it's not that easy. Much of what we hope will be recycled ends up in the trash because it's contaminated. The food containers are dirty, the pizza box is grease-stained, the newspaper is wet. Even when clean, the materials recovered from recycling need a market. For years, China bought recycling from the United States and other countries and then made new things out of the materials. But last year, China stopped accepting imports. There was quickly a ripple effect throughout recycling programs around the U.S. Small towns, like Fort Edward, had to shut down their program altogether. It was too expensive.

For professional organizer Jessica Marcy, of Poestenkill, the quandary crystallized in the form of one of her clients, a woman who feels so badly about the idea her recyclables might end up in a landfill or an incinerator that she keeps them. Meticulously cleaned stacks of plastic containers compete for space throughout her house.

"People have a hard time with clutter because they feel guilty about throwing it out. I tell people the cold, hard truth is everything they have is someday going to be trash. But they can change their habits going forward. The answer is to use less."

The experience prompted Marcy to change her own lifestyle. She was already gardening, canning and composting, but after she learned about the pitfalls of recycling, she took a hard look at her family's habits and worked to do away with her dependence on plastic. Instead of shopping at multiple grocery stores each week and buying packaged products, she switched to buying in bulk at the Honest Weight Co-op in Albany. She brings canning jars and mesh produce bags to the store, where the weight of each one is subtracted from the weight of product she's buying — flax seed, rice, corn kernels, flour, corn starch, olive oil, peanut butter, tomatoes and so on. No more boxes of cereal, individually wrapped and boxed granola bars, candy bars, bottled water, frozen pizza, hand soap. If it isn't sold at the co-op, Marcy doesn't buy it. If it's sold in a plastic container, she doesn't buy it.

Marcy realizes not everyone can or will make the changes she's made to lessen the amount of waste her family produces. She is warm and lighthearted, there's not a whiff of judgment in her approach. She wants people to be educated about what happens to their trash and to be more vocal. It is hard to avoid plastic packaging. Speak up at your local stores and let the companies you buy from know you expect better packaging options, Marcy said.

"Don't judge yourself. This is our culture. We are surrounded by messages to buy more, that we need more. If we can just stop and think before we buy. Is the flow of things into our homes equal to the flow out? When you see a beautifully packaged toy at the store, picture it all over your floor, is it something you want to pick up all the time?"

The status and cost of recycling varies widely in the Capital Region. Albany, Schenectady and Troy collect residential trash. Most suburbs are served by private haulers, although almost every recyclable ends up at Sierra Processing in Albany, which is owned by Waste Connections, one of the country's biggest trash haulers. In Wilton, where County Waste is the dominant hauler, weekly trash and recycling collection in 65-gallon containers costs $47.78. In Albany, where the city picks up trash and recycling from 21,000 residential properties between one and four units, the cost is $90 per year.

Troy residents pay $164 per year per unit for curbside trash and recycling collection with some exceptions.

Troy is in a unique position. County Waste has a 20-year lease (signed in 2004) with the local development corporation for use of the transfer station on city property. In exchange, the hauler takes city residents' recycling for free to Sierra Processing, where local recycling from all over the region is sorted. The city government is about to kick off an educational effort to reduce the recycling and trash flow. The City Council recently adopted a seven-point, 10-year plan to reduce waste. Next month, the city will work with local schools — RPI, Hudson Valley Community College and the Sage Colleges — to convince departing students to donate textiles, used furniture and functioning electronics rather than put them on the street for pickup.

"There's a number of people in Troy who want to do the right thing," said Renee Panetta, the city's recycling coordinator. "It starts with awareness, and then you can educate."

For example, Panetta said, "tanglers" wreak havoc with the machinery used at Sierra Processing to sort materials. Plastic bags, electrical cords and fabric do not belong in the recycling bin.

When single-stream recycling started in Albany in 2011, Sierra paid for materials — the floor was $10, but sometimes it was as much as $60 per ton. For about two years now, Sierra has been charging by the ton.

"It varies based on the market for recycled paper, but we paid $68 per ton in April," said Frank Zeoli, director of operations for Albany's Department of General Services.

The city collects between 3,000 and 3,500 tons of recycling per year, about 350 tons a month. At $68 a ton, that's $23,800 per month. For now, the city is going to absorb the cost.

"The mayor is steadfast that recycling is what we need to do and we're going to keep doing it," Zeoli said.

Neil Seldman, co-founder of the Washington, D.C., based Institute for Local Self-Reliance and director of its Waste to Wealth program, said single-stream recycling is to blame for the struggles recycling is facing. The recycling rate in the U.S. started climbing in the 1980s and 1990s, but slowed in 2000 to 34 percent and hasn't risen since.

"I believe single-stream has enticed people to put non recyclables in the cart," Seldman said.

But despite the blow to recycling by China's new policy, recycling can be saved and even single-stream can work, Seldman said. He has three suggestions.

"Cities have to make it easy by providing a list of what recycles and what doesn't that people can tack to the wall. Cities can also help by instituting unit pricing — charging by the amount garbage people put out for collection, and finally, switch to curb sort. The worker sorts recycling into the truck at the curb, leaving behind what doesn't recycle. It's an educational feedback loop."

In Poestenkill, where there is no municipal service, the Marcy family hired County Waste for curbside trash and recycling collection. In addition to her zero waste food shopping plan, Jessica Marcy diverts trash and recycling in another way.

To replace the lettuce she likes, but is sold in a plastic container, Marcy started growing hydroponic lettuce. Her office is now a greenhouse, with kale, chard, basil and cabbage emerging from one-use plastics repurposed as plant receptacles under special lighting. One vessel is a 2-liter soda bottle wrapped in an old gym sock to keep out the light (which can cause algae blooms in hydroponic gardening); tendrils of another plant curl out of the holes in a coffee cup lid. There's a kombucha container, several small glass jars, an almond milk carton, a wine bottle and a Tide Pod container. It's here the organizer in Marcy has to take the wheel. She only allows herself one shelf to collect containers for the garden.

lhornbeck@timesunion.com • 518-454-5352 • @leighhornbeck