The yogurt cup you put in your recyclables dumpster—along with, say, yesterday’s newspaper, a can of tuna fish, foam packing blocks, a detergent jug, a shoe box, and whatever else you might chuck in before rolling it out to the curb for morning pick-up—might actually get recycled. Then again, it might not.

It depends on whether your trash/recyclable collection company sorts out polypropylene (PP) plastic at its sortation plant, also called a MRF (pronounced Murph, short for materials recovery facility). Most yogurt cups are made of PP plastic, not typically recycled with other kinds of plastic waste, like detergent jugs, typically made of a plastic called high-density polyethylene (HDPE; no, not all plastic is the same, not by a long shot).

So if your MRF doesn’t sort PP waste from the “stream” of recyclables it collects from hundreds, if not thousands, of dumpsters like yours, it will probably be buried in a landfill along with reams of other un-recycled recyclables, right there in the maw of run-of-the-mill household trash, waste you put in the other dumpster, say, leftover beef stew not smelling so good, a sponge or two, spent kitty litter—whatever trash you put in the trash-only dumpster (one hopes in—what else?—plastic bags with plastic drawstrings; plastic bags are very hard to recycle, btw).

A dirty little secret, you could say: Many of America’s plastic recyclables often aren’t recycled despite being put in “single stream” recyclable dumpsters.

It’s a big confusing mess: What’s collected for recycling varies depending on where you live. Of course, the U.S. is a massive country with thousands of municipalities, each with its own trash collection and recycling operations. Yet the default system in many locations is “single-stream” recyclables curbside collection: One dumpster for all your recyclables and no sorting required.

The non-recycling of recyclables underscores a fundamental problem with trash in America, especially as it relates to plastic waste. The U.S. recycles an estimated 10-12% per year of its “post-consumer” plastic waste—plastic that has been used—a very low rate compared to other developed countries, like Canada and Germany. (Germany, for example, recycles more than 70% of its PET plastic waste). Cardboard, paper and metal recycling rates are much higher than plastic in the U.S. Alas, plastic remains the bad boy of American waste.

How can we increase plastic recycling? There’s no national requirement to separate plastic by type, no national laws requiring plastic to be recycled at all. Sure, garbage cops in some places might slap offenders with a ticket for putting, say, a Chinese food plastic takeout box in the trash dumpster, but this is the exception. As long as you roll your dumpsters out for pickup, the trucks come by every week, empty them out and rumble away. Out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Who has time to worry whether your soap jug with PP cap is getting washed and shredded for recycling or is buried at the dump? (It might be burned if you live near a trash-to-energy plant).

If you’re so inclined, what can you do to make sure your yogurt cup gets recycled? First, you would have to find out if your MRF recycles PP waste, typically found on trash company websites where they list what they recycle. You could store all your yogurt cups and other PP waste (check for the number 5 on the bottom of your plastic, although you might need a magnifying glass to read it). When you’ve accumulated a few bags, bring it to where it’ll be dispatched for recycling. A few Google searches will get you drop-off locations for your PP waste. You might have to drive a bit, but that yogurt cup will be reincarnated as part of a new cup or jug or bottle rather than buried forever in the ground.