Why don't you recycle?

[Rhyis.]

Ontario there's a 1 trash-can limit, and you're given as many recycling bins as you ask for. There's also recycling bins everywhere. No real reason not to recycle. It's more convenient to do it then not... And Ontario isn't even considered green by Canadian standards.

What is annoying is if you have even a single can mixed in with your paper or plastic, they won't take it. Gotta keep 'em separated™.

[Meian]

Guessing the reasons for most people I know would be based on if they have "easy" access to a recycle bin and they take many types of items. Georgia, in my area anyway, has been getting better with this over the years (although slowly) and most trash bins at my university has a recycle bin next to it.

Our waste management for the neighborhood we use has two different containers (not the green box container we're use to seeing) for recycling and the other for regular trash and has been more accepting of different materials that weren't there before, such as glass.

Those I know who don't recycle is a result of there not being a recycle bin near them at the time they are done consuming, such as a soda plastic bottle, and only a trash bin is nearby. I try to get them to wait and recycle to the nearest bin or to let me do it since it is a bit of a pet peeve of mine if I see this happen.

So glad I don't really have to go to the recycle center 25 min away as much anymore. Things are getting better even though slowly...

[Absolutely Virtue]

Except for glass and steel, recycling takes more energy than it saves and often adds extra pollution to the environment (especially paper products).

This actually greatly oversimplifies the subject. And using phrases like "environmental hysterics" just shows you've got a political horse in the race. In many cases, we do spend more, net, on recycling than we would on simply burying this crap. But it's extremely difficult to get an accurate measure of the difference, because recycling systems vary so greatly. If you send a gas guzzling truck to pick up a few bottles, then yes, that's wasteful. But if you have a good plan for collection, have a good buyer at a good price, and have low operating costs, it's a net gain. And that doesn't include even more complex subjects like varying costs of extracting/producing raw materials versus using post-consumer. Shit is situational.

And finally, some people just like the idea of re-using things. The landfill crisis is indeed a myth. We are not running out of places to put this stuff, yet. But it doesn't take a scientist to figure out that if you keep digging holes and burying shit, you're eventually going to run out of places to put holes. Maybe not for a thousand years, but that doesn't exactly make me feel any better.

[Meph]

I guess I kinda do and dont.
like most I recycle plastic and aluminum bottles and any kind of glass, the rest goes with everything else since it will all be burned or dumped together at the end.


Im with Alleya


also watch penn&tellers episode about recycling

[Yuri-G]

I recycle because I don't want to piss off this guy.

http://thepointofitall.files.wordpre...tainplanet.jpg

[Demosthenes11]

Would you guys say perspectives are changing? I have family (both my own, and my in-laws) who think my wife and I are worthless hippies because we take the time to put the beer bottles in one bag, and beer cans in another. Like this is some amazing affront to their freedom as Americans.

Thing is, we could probably get just about everyone to agree that littering is bad. If you throw a plastic bag in the street, you'll get plenty of dirty looks. Will we one day give people the same dirty looks if they just bury the bag in the ground somewhere?

if people stop judging them like pretentious dickheads, then yes

[finalwolf]

Long Beach is pretty cool about what they take in recycling, all recyclables goes into 1 bin, truck comes by, picks it up, brings the recyclables to a plant where it's sorted out. All plastic, aluminum, metals, Styrofoam, paper. Batteries are recycled too, but are handled differently. only thing I don't recycle are biohazards and items with food particles.

[Ikith]

I recycle but I have to pay for it which kinda pisses me off. But whatever.

[Shalyn]

I'm actually a recycle-holic, as my boyfriend can attest to... I was actually looking for a place to recycle staples since we go through a LOT at my work and all have mugs full of them. Anyone know?

Either way, Toronto has some pretty good recycling, even when we had to separate the paper and plastic. It's all in one HUGE bin now, larger than the trash bin they supply, and they do compost as well, which is NOT fun in the Summer.

As for the garbage bin, to 'encourage' recycling, they actually charge money if you 1. put out more than one trash bin/a bag out of the bin (if they even take it) and/or 2. if you choose the larger bin option (since we get a choice of 3 sizes).

There are recycle bins everywhere in this city, so I find it hard *not* to recycle, but even when one isn't accessible I tend to carry the bottle or whatever it happens to be until I get to one. When I went to NJ and saw what their recycling was in one of the counties I was in shock. Optional recycling and you put it in a bag, and only cans and bottles. I felt dirty putting recyclables in the garbage. I hope they separate it.. lol

[Meian]

Also, how was this not mentioned yet?

[Kryssan]

I honestly don't see the need to do so at home. Most of the garbage I generate is paper or cardboard, and is generally shredded. The small amount of plastic I throw away isn't worth separating for recycling, with exception to the plastic bags the trash is in. I always drink out of the same metal containers and its all water anyway so I don't run into the need for cans/bottles/glass.



At work, there are no separation facilities for recycling. Just the different types of waste - general, radioactive, and mixed. Regardless, all of them are getting buried or reused in some way. The exception to this is paper - we are not allowed to throw away or recycle paper, it must all be incinerated.

[Takedown3]

i saw something on the discovery channel a couple of months ago where they had some science dudes drilling in some cali landfills that have been in use for decades.

what they have found was simple newspaper, among other things, that by all rights should have decomposed long ago that was still 100% readable, barely faded, with dates going back into the 30's, 40's, and 50's. We know that decomp happens but when you stack garbage on top of top of garbage over and over again for years upon years approaching and eventually becoming centuries it just just doesn't work as we expect it too.

this is science that has been done over and over again in landfills all over the US. Just burying our trash is not a solution, it's a hindrance because we have nothing else to do with it short of sending it to space.

its not responsible to continue consuming at the rate we do, eventually we will be overcome by this mess and if we don't spend the money to clean up and recycle/reuse what we have already harvested from our natural resources then it will be to our undoing.

[Kryssan]

When exactly will that eventuality be? There are only 600k ish acres of landfills total in the US, which composes far less than 1% of all the acreage. I don't know what the numbers are exactly and I'm too lazy to look them up honestly, nor do I know what the numbers are like elsewhere in the world. Not saying there is anything wrong with following the three R's, but the landfill-taking-over argument is old.

[Plow]

Quick follow-up. For those that don't because there are no facilities available, can you describe where you live? Not in detail, just like urban, suburban, rural, etc? I have lived in apartments all around DC and the suburbs, and I've never been in a complex that didn't have recycling somewhere (although I often had to look for it). Just wondering if that's regional.

I live in the middle of nowhere, the one thing I really should be recycling is my milk cartons (I drink absurd amounts of milk), but yeah, it's a tremendous pain in the ass to take a ton of milk cartons to a recycling place, and nobody offers a recylcing pick-up around here.

[Absolutely Virtue]

See, that's the part I don't understand. What difference does it make /when/ there will eventually just be too much garbage? Isn't it enough to know that it is eventually going to happen? Is passing the problem down to your 10th generation somehow preferable to passing it down to your 9th? I'm not trolling, I'm just wondering if this isn't akin to arguing about what started the fire when you should be calling the fire department.

Environmentalists are fond of saying that the problem with climate change isn't that it's happening too fast. Rather, it's not happening fast enough. If people could see the problem with their own eyes, they'd do something about it. But since it might not happen for 200 hundred years, that's somehow not a big deal.

[Plow]

I think you answered your own question there.

[Takedown3]

When exactly will that eventuality be? There are only 600k ish acres of landfills total in the US, which composes far less than 1% of all the acreage. I don't know what the numbers are exactly and I'm too lazy to look them up honestly, nor do I know what the numbers are like elsewhere in the world. Not saying there is anything wrong with following the three R's, but the landfill-taking-over argument is old.

pass the buck much? it's just irresponsible to dump our trash on the land that we want to keep beautiful and whole. sure we need landfills until we find some way that works better then just recycling, but why not work towards reducing what we dump in landfills while we work on a solution that makes it so we don't have to have them at all?

[SephYuyX]

Why don't you recycle?

Simple. It costs money to get recycling service in this area.

[Fistandantilus]

Here we have recycle trucks that come by just like curbside garbage collection and separate your papers/plastics/glass/metal into individual bins on the truck. They go house to house and come once or twice a week in some locations. (twice in my neighborhood)

That's how it is where I live. At my college apartment there was also a recycling area right across from the complex's garbage dump. No real reason not to recycle for us, but still my roommates would be lazy for some reason.

[OzzofAsura]

I'm actually a recycle-holic, as my boyfriend can attest to...l

This is no joke. She doesn't mess around about littering either...

Although, I don't recycle as much as she does, I still do it most of the time.