Follow Up Thoughts on Recycling
April 21, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Opinions & Thoughts , trackback
After reading the great comments on last week’s post on RecycleBank, I decided to do an informal survey (among my “light green” friends) about recycling habits.
To Joyce’s point about lack of curbside access, sadly, no one said they would make an effort to recycle or drop off at a local recycling center – at least no consistently. Even when I mentioned the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, no one honestly believed they would consistently recycle without a curbside access.
To Greenbean’s point of low recycling rates (of certain items), even with convenience of curbside pickup, all of them said they use their recycling bins to some extent but 6 out of 8 said allowable vs. unallowable recyclables are confusing. A few said their cities don’t take any plastics containers; some say theirs take only certain numbers but can’t remember which ones; my city doesn’t take paper milk cartons but will take plastic milk jugs. The list of confusing items was probably more than the list of generally accepted recyclables. None of them remembers ever getting a recycle clarification list and only 3 has ever bothered searching on their local waste management website. If single stream or co-mingle recycling was available (like in Donna’s neighborhood), all 8 said they believe they would see recycle more as it would eliminate the chore of sorting and guessing.
To arduous’ point on incentives, 4 out of 8 said they would spend more time sorting out recyclable items if recycling were free but garbage service was not. However, all of them agreed that they would make the effort if a program like RecycleBank actually paid for the recycling. Having redeemable points to spend on other things and measurable results swayed the holdouts.
Not surprisingly, the overarching theme is that if made easier, more people would recycle. However, as all the commenters pointed out, the current, fragmented and often inconsistent recycling programs have much room for improvements. On a bright note though, at least in my county, the plan is to fully convert to single stream recycling by 2010. Slowly, local governments seem to be catching on…
CindyC at Organicpicks
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Comments»
The confusion is a big problem. When we went with a more recycling-friendly hauler, they just told us they took all plastic except film-type plastic. that made it much less confusing for us, and we definately started putting more in the bin.
Technically how does single stream recycling work? Specifically doesn’t paper get soiled by the drips from cans and bottles? Where we live, we are not supposed to put paper with food stains in the recycling box.
In our St Louis suburb, our 64-gallon recycling bin is collected once a week for free. The bin has a handy list of what can and cannot be recycled stuck right on top, so it’s hard to forget while piling in the recyclables. In fact, it’s so easy (and at the same time so hard for two people to fill up) that I’ve started collecting/hauling non-white-paper recyclables from our office building every week.
The big decision my husband and I are currently trying to make is whether to switch from the paper milk cartons (not recyclable in our area) to plastic milk cartons (recyclable, but we never use quite all of the milk before it goes bad, and it’s plastic after all). We’re not convinced there’s a good answer for that one…
To answer Danny’s question, in our area we put all the recyclables in one can, but we’re not supposed to put in anything that has food residue on it (like pizza boxes). It all goes to Portland to a facility where people sort it all out. Anything that can’t be used goes to the landfill, but it’s still worth it because so many more people participate in recycling.
A further answer to Danny’s question, my sister lives in Berkeley where they have food scrap pick up. Apparently, they put all of their food residue paper in with the food scraps. It would sure make things simpler, wouldn’t it?
Living in a suburb of Seattle, we have great recycling service and yes- recycling is free, garbage is not! We can recycle plastic bottles 1 2 and I bvelieve 3 or 4, scrap metal, cans, glass bottles, paper, newsprint, magazines etc. Food as I understand it can be recycled only if you also pay for a yard waste bin you can put it in there- I have a compost bin so I choose not to have a yard waste bin. The rain barrels and compost bins here are provided by the city for a nominal ($10) fee once per year! But I firmly believe that if folks had the option of recycling without paying for garbage pick up they would not do it!