D.C. said it was recycling — it wasn’t. Nearly 53 tons of plastic trash cans sent to landfill.

Teresa Ahmann - D.C. resident Teresa Ahmann found scores of trash and recycling bins mixed in with garbage at the city’s Fort Totten Transfer Station on May 14.

(Aaron C. Davis/The Washington Post) - A D.C. sanitation crew loads cans left for removal on a curb on May 17 in Northwest.

Aaron C. Davis

City officials acknowledged Tuesday that about 5,300 unwanted trash cans were sent to landfills for incineration.

Jonathan O’Connell

The city would pay for up to $150 million in infrastructure improvement for the Buzzard Point facility.

Mike DeBonis

Congress is “the only entity that can provide budget autonomy,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rules.

Then there was the arrest and lockup of a little-known District artist for trying to repurpose (as flowerpots) several of the old cans that had been plastered with “Take Me!” signs. And the city’s overcorrection of the languishing can problem, which officials dubbed a “blitz” — cleared away not just unwanted cans, but even some recently delivered ones.

And now, it turns out that the city has not been recycling thousands of the cans, as the administration of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) had promised — but chucking them instead.

City officials admitted Tuesday that sanitation crews dumped at least 132 truckloads of plastic bins — a third of the more than 16,000 old cans collected last week — alongside city waste and hauled them all off to Virginia to be incinerated.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/pictures-sho...