Trying to recycle the wrong materials only clogs up the system. We asked a recycling expert about the dos and don'ts of recycling takeout boxes.

“Here we have a man whose job it is to gather the day’s refuse in the capital,” wrote Charles Baudelaire, invoking the ragpicker, a new type on the streets of his native nineteenth-century Paris.

With tailored, evidence-based policies, the U.S. can relieve the burden on local and municipal governments, communities, and ...