Why Don't People Recycle When It's Available? (disposal, companies, Texas)
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Relative to many environmental problems like non-point source runoff, or brown haze, the solution to much of the solid waste we produce is one of the easier environmental issues. With only minimal effort we can sort and recycle trash. With a tad more effort we can compost our organics. It won't resolve the entire problem of waste, but it would make a huge dent.
I'm truly amazed at how L A Z Y so many people are; they do not want to be inconvenienced in any way.
I think every city, every town in this country should apply fines to people who choose not to recycle. People can choose to not recycle. Just pay for it, and pay big. Too lazy to take 5 seconds and toss the pop bottle in the plastic bin? Pay a fine. Or, we could charge people by the weight of trash they produce for their household.
Most people do not know much more about saving the planet.. they just spend and waste almost anything without knowing the cause and effects. I speak not for all but for most people especially those that living a great life without worrying abotu finances. Wasting can never do anything good but recycling and saving our planet do!
We could solve many problems with this issues. First, we could take unemployed and homeless people and send them to the dumps where the cities dump their waste. Conveyer belts could be set up so all trash goes down the conveyer belt and the recyleables pulled out by hand.
Pay the workers on "commision".
Win - Win solution. Bravo!!!!
We should send the elitists to the dumps, they are the ones who are wrapped around the axle on recycling.
Just picture it, "The Housewives of the Bayonne Dumps" "Hollywood Landfill Queens" "The Garbage Sifting Sluts of Politicians"
The thought process behind this post borders on elitist snob.
Quote:
take unemployed and homeless people and send them to the dumps
~ Save the planet!!! Outlaw all vehicles, planes, trains and ships!!
Recyclables collection isn't profitable for a Refuse collection company. It's profitable for a recycling center. We pay over $200 to dump. The center sorts it out and sell it to China. Commercial collection produces revenues. Residential not so much. We provide the service to win bids. We're not losing money on it, just not making money on it either.
Commercial recycling is a business. There is a niche where the volume produced is large enough to make it profitable, small enough so that the user does not recycle the unused materials themselves. A very few companies can make it work in commercial recycling. The volumes they need are enormous by residential standards. Plastic casting and exclusion wastes are profitable when a truckload can be picked up in one place. They wash it, grind it and sell it to others.
There is no residential recycler that is profitable based on residential recycling. There are land fills that charge you a bunch of money to drop stuff off and some of the stuff gets recycled. And, they may make a profit, but they don't make a profit based on recycling.
And that is the reason that residential recycling is damaging the environment. Because additional resources are consumed to accomplish the recycling as opposed to dumping it in the landfill. People who do not understand this are doomed to consume excess resources for the good feeling that their recycling activities produce. I'm OK with them doing it. I just don't want someone to tell me I should be driving my plastic water bottles over to the recycling center.
The reason a lot of people don't recycle is because recycling is not marketed well. The core message always seems to be centered around saving the planet for future generations. Most people don't/can't/won't think long term.
A recycling marketing campaign targeted to the short term benefits (spending less on trash bags) and to laziness (less trash bags means less tying the bag up, putting a new trash bag in, etc. It is much easier to just toss stuff into a bing) would do much better.
Commercial recycling is a business. There is a niche where the volume produced is large enough to make it profitable, small enough so that the user does not recycle the unused materials themselves. A very few companies can make it work in commercial recycling. The volumes they need are enormous by residential standards. Plastic casting and exclusion wastes are profitable when a truckload can be picked up in one place. They wash it, grind it and sell it to others.
There is no residential recycler that is profitable based on residential recycling. There are land fills that charge you a bunch of money to drop stuff off and some of the stuff gets recycled. And, they may make a profit, but they don't make a profit based on recycling.
And that is the reason that residential recycling is damaging the environment. Because additional resources are consumed to accomplish the recycling as opposed to dumping it in the landfill. People who do not understand this are doomed to consume excess resources for the good feeling that their recycling activities produce. I'm OK with them doing it. I just don't want someone to tell me I should be driving my plastic water bottles over to the recycling center.
I pay a waste company to handle my garbage, they are more than welcome to recycle.
we recycle what we can, food waste is added to the compost pile or fed to the chickens
our state charges a bottle deposit of 5c per recyclable bottle you buy and you get that back if you take them to the machines, so we generally save up the bottles and do a big run once a month.
our town dump actually has free recycling for plastic glass, cans and paper/cardboard so whatever can be seperated gets done that way, and then usefull stuff is either kept for reuse, put on the freebe table at the dump or for thigns like furniture recycled through free cycle or craigslist.
i know the big problems around here...
convenience...people just arnt interested in taking the time to put their soda bottles in the machines for a measly 5c a bottle...i dont know if part of it is also because this is a wealthy county? mabe some folks think its beneath them...(in which case i think they should donate them to a homeless person, a couple bottles recycled through walmart is a hot cup of coffe or a warm meal!)
and most people dont know about our town dump, even many in town...they all use garbage pick up services (though some take the time to seperate into blue boxes) because its more convenient, otherwise they have to take time out of their busy schedual to take their stuff to the dump...another task that some around here find degrading.
and after watching our town garbage trusks (we have 2 independant contracts workign the ton, but dont have municiple garbage) the few that do sort are wasting their time as it all gets dumped into the back of the big trucks and squished together with the regular trash.
I most of recycle. But if I am too tired of it I do not. If I have to walk miles to find sink where to put something, sometimes I am just.. Too tired...
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