When I was living in Japan and shared a homestay with an American fellow from Missouri, it shocked me that he would throw all his recyclables in the general rubbish. As an Australian, despite how my country isn't the best in that field, I've always taken recycling seriously (even with the more challenging rules in Japan). It took him a while before the Japanese host and I could train him to recycle properly. It's not like he wasn't a decent guy, he just wasn't used to it. It made me wonder if recycling just wasn't a big thing in the US, and to hear that California, as a more liberal state, is still on 20% seems to confirm that.
I've seen those in other countries too, actually. My random optimistic theory is that the designer of such bins is trying to "train" people into recycling before the local government entity offers proper recycling infrastructure. But the reality is probably just that they want to look "green" without doing the hard part.
Part of the problem is that recycling is a state-by-state thing, and some states will simply never care about recycling.
When I was growing up in NYC recycling was even part of the curriculum, but there were definitely contexts in which recycling was difficult (for example, sidewalks usually had street garbage cans, but not street recycling cans)
Missouri has shockingly bad recycling service, so it doesn't surprise me. Before I lived there I meticulously separated recylables but soon adopted the local habit.
(St Louis. Kansas City has pretty decent service in this respect)
