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In most of Europe recycling is taken very serious. There are designed bins and collection stations.
Trash collectors (city waste management) is fining households that don't participate correctly.
Glass sorted by colors, paper, plastic, metal, organic material, electronics - all is properly sorted by citizens and placed in appropriate bins.
I think they are maybe just more disciplined and take the time to make it right?
Most people here, when I talked about it said that they don't have time to fool with this "silliness" nor want to have all those separate bins in their kitchen or property. If they don't get paid for it they won't do it.
China stopped taking US recycling due to high contamination. People don't want to be bothered with rinsing their containers or removing paper labels, or separating glass jars and metal lids etc.
BTW:
Germany has the highest recycling rate in the world. The nation recycles an impressive 66.1% of its waste.
Recycling is not that dead in my area but I've about given up on it. The more I read about what goes in the bin and how, the less motivated I am. Add to that the fact that not every town is the same, and you have to continually read the rules because they change. ie a nearby town does not allow shredded paper at all. My town does, but it has to be in a paper bag before it goes in the bin. And some of it is things I've been doing for years without thinking - like tossing a glass olive oil bottle in the bin (I keep a small trash can just outside the kitchen door, when it fills I put it all in the big bin outside). Ok back to that bottle. I normally toss it with the cap. I guess we're not supposed to do that. Technically it has remnants of oil in it. Are we supposed to pull the label off? I have no idea. I also have cats who eat canned food. I would have to scrub the cans (dishwasher) before putting them in my inside pail else the cats may pull them out to lick them. I have a hard enough time keeping up with dishes, I am not going to wash trash too.
My town includes in a monthly newsletter what areas of town are doing bad with the stuff in the recycling bin. That's about when I gave up. They don't - so far - go through the trash to see what should have been recycled, they just ding us on what we put in the recycle bin wrong.
I recycle all cardboard, junk mail - the easy stuff I guess. I wish it were easier to recycle things like books.
Simple truth-- small market for recycled plastic or paper products. No need to recycle the paper-- it's naturally recycled by itself...just don't bury it a hypoxic dump.,.Recycled paper and plastic are of inferior grade. Both are fibrous and the fibers become shorter with each pass thru the system, so recycling only delays its inevitable trip to the dump.
Both paper & plastic are organic products. They should be incinerated to produce power.
I quit recycling when I heard over and over that the garbage companies just toss all the recycling and other garbage together. I was also finally ticked (for want of a nastier word) at having to spend all that time washing bottles and cans and stripping plastic off of kleenex boxes and sorting all the crap. And to add insult to injury, we were being charged by the garbage company to do that. When I finally called and told them to come pick up my recycle bin, I told them if they wanted things recycled, they needed to pay us to do it, not the other way around. I'm not their damned employee.
So now everything goes into the trash. Yeah, I'm still paying for recycling, but I figure they can use that money to pay their own employees to pick through the garbage themselves.
I would goto our lovely lake for some beautiful natural break from the city... to encounter plastic bottles, slippers, coffee cups and lids and bottles and ... well everything in the water and on the land.
And this is world wide. You can't escape this nonsense... and it's just the "tip of the iceberg" in the garbage we strewn everywhere.
It's moronic, lazy attitudes that perpetuate the mess that we are creating on this earth.
I wish all the people who think it's just "virtue signalling" magically get ALL this garbage strewn all over their lawns and backyard.
Americans love single-use plastic/convenient products (and manufacturers have notoriously catered to such). That said, per a recent poll, perhaps the ‘tides are changing’ as 80% of people support (national) policies that reduce single-use plastic as they aren’t easy to recycle (even if folks were willing to do so).
That said, several states have taken on responsibility (California, New York, Vermont, Connecticut and so on) relative to such, including a ban on plastic bags.
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Originally Posted by CorporateCowboy
Folks have been paying more relative to single-use plastics and convenience for decades. How difficult is it to use a canvas bag or reuse a plastic bag?
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
What if I am not planning on grocery shopping, make a stop and buy some groceries. Should I have to, Caribbean-style, carry them on my head?
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
I actually do; they do not make an attractive addition to the back seat.
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
I complain about anything that causes inconvenience and expense just so legislators (who are supposed to represent us) can feel good.
Actually, you were complaining about (reusable or plastic) bags that don’t look attractive in the back seat of your car. In other words, anything to make an excuse as to why it’s too inconvenient, expensive or complicated for you to support a ban on single-use plastic bags.
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