Do you judge your neighbors who don't recycle? (house, neighborhood)

[someguyatx]

I judge my neighbors who don't recycle and this week out of 6 immediate neighbors I was the only one who had a bin out and it makes me a bit mad. As I looked down the street I saw maybe half recycle and I even noticed one trash can overstuffed with recyclable materials. I dont understand why people do not use this free service that is provided by the city. Thanks to single stream recycling we easily generate more recyclables than trash on a weekly basis.

[austinnerd]

Luckily pretty much everyone in my neighborhood recycles to some degree. Actually, we almost have the "opposite" problem in that there are some neighbors who haven't seemed to catch snap to the fact that the recycling is only picked up every other week as they put their recycling containers out every week

[Trainwreck20]

Umm...I haven't really paid that close of attention, but it pretty much seems every house on our street uses the recycle bin on the recycle pick up day. You aren't off by a week, are you ? We down-sized our garbage bin when they passed out the big recycle container, and quite a few of our neighbors did, too. I saw in another thread that they are proposing to increase the rates on the biggest sized garbage bin, so maybe your neighbors will simply be doing the city a service by paying a lot extra for the disposal of the recycling materials....sort of a revenue stream from the lazy....

[cls88]

Yes!! And at work too! It irritates the heck of me when people throw water bottles, aluminum cans, paper or everything else recyclable in the trash!

[blakely]

In our neighborhood, it's not a free service. I think we pay about $10 per month for it, in additional to the garbage fee.

So that explains why some of my neighbors don't recycle.

Otherwise, I just wouldn't spend my time worrying about what my neighbors do. Yeah, it would be great if everyone did, but that's just not human nature and there's only so much you can do about it besides public awareness and making it as simple as possible.

[JayBrown80]

I put my recycle bin out when it is full, which is probably once a month. I try not to have a lot of waste around the house, and since there are only 2 people in my house, we don't have a lot of bottles/cans etc.

So there will be times when I don't put out my recycling (because it's not full) and my neighbors may judge me (because they think I may not recycle at all). There are times when I put out recycling on the wrong day too. You just never know with me. I like to keep my neighbors guessing.

And no, I don't really pay attention to what they do.

[N. Olikee]

We actually have two recycling containers, and manage to fill them both up. If I'm going to be charged for a large garbage can, then we'd probably better downsize.

I don't pay close attention or judge my neighbors recycling habits, but I think most do use the service.

[love roses]

I put out my recycling, but I definitely do not judge my neighbors who don't. Heck, who am I to do that when the neighbor across the street from me loads up her car with literally EVERYTHING that can be recycled, once a week, and drives it to the recycle center down the road herself.

[Trainwreck20]

I put my recycle bin out when it is full, which is probably once a month

My wife insists that I take the recycling out on its day, whether it is full or not (or even half full). I guess she is worried we will have a sudden onslaught of recycling material and will need to use that whole, humongous bin in one week .

[Mrs.JT]

Wow, I never even thought to think that I'd ever be judged.

I understand why people might judge, but I don't think that's something serious enough to place judgement upon. I would never judge neighbors who don't. That's on them.

In my first house, I recycled every week. My bins were always full. When I got married and moved into my husband's house, the area didn't offer recycling, and it felt weird to not recycle. I lived there for about 2 years. In our current home, recycling service just became available a few months ago, and it's taking me some time to get back in the swing of recycling things, but I definitely try to be mindful. Our recylce bin isn't full each time, so we might not put it out.