I was extremely excited last Friday as our new recycling bins arrived. (What? I lead a boring life, what can I say?) It made me wonder how much other places on the planet enforced recycling
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As we are committed environmentalists in my household, we recycle vigilantly, and both of us get annoyed at the twentysomething yuppies next door who constantly throw recyclables in the trash because they can't be bothered sorting. Our building can and has been fined for recycling violations, but I honestly don't feel like my freedoms are being taken away. I wish everyone would do it voluntarily and it didn't need to be enforced, but people are lazy. Most people *do* seem to want to, though. But there are serious landfill issues; we're simply running out of space for trash.
Being charged for trash removal when you have *not* been charged before, sounds annoying. That's done by municipality here -- some places do have a fee or you have to haul your own trash to the dump; I've never lived any place where there wasn't free pickup, though.
Our charges are just taken out of our general local taxes. I think you can get the council to come and take away specific large items - but there may be an extra charge for that too.
As you say, the landfill situation is so horrendous we HAVE to do something about rubbish. Doing a bit of sorting seems a small price to pay for helping in this department.
Huzzah for proper recycling bins!!!!!! Here we have two weekly bins - green (including all food scraps) and blue (plastic/glass/cans/paper) - plus a tiny garbage bin.
In Hawai'i they had bottles/glass/cans and that was it! Nearly drove me insane throwing all that food waste into a landfill where a head of lettuce takes a year to break down.
I love the recycling in my city. They accept quite a lot and it is unlimited. They are trying to force more recycling by having one unlimited day of recycling and one limited day of trash. (The city sells the recycling but has to pay to dump trash.) Now we have single stream (everything in one bin) and can put it out in any type of bin as long as it is in the right spot. Way back I was usually the only one who recycled and now almost everyone on my block does it.
Way back I was usually the only one who recycled and now almost everyone on my block does it. And doesn't that feel good? Our local council has one of the best records for recycling in the country. The local tips (dumps) are very stringent over splitting waste too (different areas for different things). I think it's great.
I love recycling, and I was very excited when my small, mostly blue-collar (and frequently looked down on) city was the first one in the state to institute city-wide recycling when the state mandated it. Every other city/town/snotty hamlet went neighborhood by neighborhood. But we all got our blue bins at once and started recycling the same week, based on our regular trash pickup day. So...yay you and your fancy new bins!
Re: Reduce Reuse Recyclemsb66October 7 2009, 15:06:50 UTC
Hmmmmm. We call your type of property terraced - and usually (over here) there is a back alley/access to a property that lets bins be used. Dragging it through the house cannot be fun, so I fully appreciate whey you go for the 3 bin option.
I think The West in general has got away from the the whole 'use something until the end of it's life' process now - and this has caused many of our waste problems. Affluence, but at what cost?
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Being charged for trash removal when you have *not* been charged before, sounds annoying. That's done by municipality here -- some places do have a fee or you have to haul your own trash to the dump; I've never lived any place where there wasn't free pickup, though.
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As you say, the landfill situation is so horrendous we HAVE to do something about rubbish. Doing a bit of sorting seems a small price to pay for helping in this department.
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In Hawai'i they had bottles/glass/cans and that was it! Nearly drove me insane throwing all that food waste into a landfill where a head of lettuce takes a year to break down.
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And doesn't that feel good? Our local council has one of the best records for recycling in the country. The local tips (dumps) are very stringent over splitting waste too (different areas for different things). I think it's great.
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(The comment has been removed)
I think The West in general has got away from the the whole 'use something until the end of it's life' process now - and this has caused many of our waste problems. Affluence, but at what cost?
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