When I opened this restaurant, I was over-idealistic,” said Adam Ritter, who owns the Sidecar Bar and Grille at 22nd and Christian streets with his wife, and who paid a local trash company to collect his glass, plastic and cardboard.

“I was outside one day when they threw it all in the back of the same truck — the trash, the glass, everything," Ritter said. "I called them to see what the deal was. I was told that there was no money in recycling glass.”

When Ritter switched to JR’s Hauling and Recycling, they didn’t trick him into recycling glass. They merely told him that they didn’t do it.

“Almost no [local waste management companies] recycle glass,” says JR's owner Mike Lascala. “Glass is more of an expense than it’s worth, so there is no reason for anyone to do it."

Legally, bars are required to recycle glass and some smaller bars and restaurants do so through the city. But many more throw bottles right into the trash, some because they see no reason to recycle and some because they use private haulers that don’t offer the service.

And while the city can require bars to recycle glass, they don’t have much say in what happens to the glass once it's collected.

"This is an issue we are aware of and are going to go after," said city Recycling Coordinator Scott McGrath. “Our current ordinances and regulations don’t really deal with this particular issue. I would have to get the state involved.”

In the meantime, Ritter and hundreds of other bar owners like him will continue throwing their bottles — hundreds of thousands of them — in the trash.

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A city official said they're aware of the problem of bars not recycling beer bottles, often because their trash hauler doesn't recycle glass. "We're going to be doing more education and enforcement in the coming year," said recycling coordinator Scott McGrath, "and we're going to have workshops targeted for different industries, including bars and restaurants, to help them find solutions to these problems."