Recycling -- No One Cares

Makes me cringe thinking recycling some products costs more right now then to make new. Seems like a case of the right path with the wrong leadership.

As for my personal finances, recycling saves me about $250 a year. What little garbage I do generate I throw in my neighbor's bin in exchange for watching their house now and then. So that's a $25 a month bill I don't have, the neighbors don't need to pay anyone when they go on vacation and they get free entertianment by watching me. LOL. I figure it costs at most $50 a year for me to dispose of other things like tires, etc.

 

well people do think about it but it never comes to there mind for most people because they have other things to worry about like going to work or trying to get food on there table making sure they pay there bills wandering if they should go to there buddies wandering if they should go to the store and by a burrito etc

you know how people think you are one

so it just never crosses there mind with all this stuff that is already going through there mind

 

Because people are lazy (in America especially) and just want the convenience of tossing it out when they're through. What a lot of people don't realize is the fact melting down glass & aluminum for recycling wastes a lot of energy... you save that energy by creating the packaging to be reusable from the beginning. One of the venues I work in a lot is a local microbrewery... I'm trying to convince them to get a program going where people can get a small amount of money back for their used beer bottles, which can then be washed and re-used.

Our local recycling program was investigated a few years ago and turns out they were just dumping it in with household trash at the transfer station. People threw a fit and now our recyclables are actually sent to a processing facility.

 

recyclings overrated. My dad is high up at waste managment and all there trash goes to landfills that make power for millions of homes. Still good to recycle for the long run i guess...

 

Right. That was actually a very good idea.

I moved to Europe at the beginning of this year. In the part of Europe I live in (Poland, to be exact) you hear people frequently saying, "Oh, don't use this (plastic grocery bags, for example) it will 'hurt the earth'", and other ridiculous statements like this. The ironic thing is that with all this supposed 'environmental consciousness' that exists here, there are much fewer opportunities to recycle things here than there are in the US. In the US, most buildings and apartment projects have separate dumpsters for recyclable goods, and almost all residential garbage services provide a separate bin to put recyclables in. You almost never see that kind of thing here.

So, the solution to the recycling problem in this part of the world is to not do something. That is, don't use plastic grocery bags (most stores now charge for them to discourage people from using them.) Well, why don't they just recycle the damned things? "Oh, we don't have the money for x and y and z" is the answer you usually get.....sure....

I used to think that the level of environmental awareness was low in the US until I came here. I was wrong. Almost no oportunities here to recycle things, undrinkable tap water.....wow, real 'awareness'.

If Americans don't recycle things, it's just because they're too lazy (or unconcerned) to do it-it sure isn't becuse they don't have the opportunity.

 

The sad thing is here in the states, even when we do recycle and pay for a recycling program, many times what we thought is being recycled is not. For example the glass we recycle 9 times outta 10 gets crushed and dumped in the landfill and I have spoke to more than one trash collector who has said that much of the cardboard put into recycling bins is just incinerated.

 

Some of us do care. There are organizations that do pick up recycled cans and such. Don't give up, you are helping the earth in a good way. There are some of us that still aren't giving up and want to clean things up for us and our children for the future. So, I thank you for your effort because now you're an encouragement for me now.

 

People are fucking lazy. They can't be bothered to sort through recyclables and would rather throw it all out as one.
We have 3 recycling bins, HUGE recycling bins and I always make a habit of sorting through fucking garbage to put the recyclables where they belong. I'm surrounded by lazy people.

 

The less shit you buy, the easier it is to recycle. Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. Even the environmentalists that came up with the ad campaign decided recycling was the least important.

 

Land fills suck, It doesnt seem like many people care we as a whole are making a Inconceivably large mountain of garbage... Like Cryptoman said I think we should focus more on the Reduce and Re-use part of that a lot more..

I'd hope our recycles end up being recycled and not just dump in a land fill..

 

It's sad to say, but most people won't recycle until the environment gets so bad that they make recycling a law. I try to recycle as much as I can, although it's not always possible depending on ur location.

I also don't throw half eaten fruit/veggies into the garbage. Usually I'll find a thick bush and toss it into the center of it, or way off into the forest. People think I'm littering, but really I'm saving the earth. The real crime is dumping it into a giant mound of ground where it'll never decompose and never give back to the environment.

 

The truth about recycling

With stories of old TVs ending up in Nigerian landfill sites, the collapse in demand for recycled materials, and claims that incineration is a better way to dispose of waste, there's a growing backlash against recycling. So should we still be washing up those baked beans cans? Leo Hickman finds out

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/recycling-waste-environment