Should recycling be mandatory?

Yes.

A nice thought, but it would be impossible to enforce.

Yes. It’s 2010.

I think it would be a good idea, but it’s not the only way to get people to do what you want them to. For example, we could simply charge for garbage collection by the pound, with a discount for every pound of recycling. Although that would actually be harder to enforce than mandatory recycling.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities Not impossible at all. There are a lot of methods. Say for example that if the collectors notice any recyclables in your garbage they don’t take any of it. Or you are fined for any recyclables found in your garbage. Sure you could hide it, but it would be easier to just put it in the right bin. You couldn’t catch it all, but that’s true of any broken laws.

@Snarp You’d have the lazy trash collectors, though..
It should be, but I don’t think it’s really possible to make it mandatory.
Edit: Now that I think about it, our city gave everyone recycling bins that are bigger than our normal trash cans.. So they are at least trying.

Only if the binmen step up to the plate too. Give us proper wheelie bins for recycling, & stop being such pedantic pricks about what goes where, they’re the sodding binmen, if they don’t like handling rubbish, get another job!

Yes. Where I live, there isn’t recycling and it makes me feel bad to see all of these plastic bottles and cans being thrown in the trash. I think everyone should do their part. :)

@Snarp Really? So now we’re gonna have the trash police sifting through people’s garbage bags?

It would be easy to notice If somebody tossed something into a garbage can by itself, but say I put recyclables in a black garbage bag. There would be no way of finding them unless somebody opened the bag to check.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities Really, it’s not that hard. Cans and bottles clank, they have obvious shapes. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it could work fairly easily. Of course, we can also just say that we won’t collect your garbage unless it is in a clear bag. Not so much a big deal, where I live yard waste must be separated for collection, it has to be in a can marked yard waste or in paper bags or bundled as branches. I’m sure some people occasionally hide some yard waste in regular trash on purpose or accidentally and vice versa, I’ve put a few weeds in the regular garbage myself, but for the most part it works just fine. I don’t see the big deal, why would you want to break the law? It takes no real effort on your part to recycle.

But fine, we’ll weigh your garbage and charge you by the pound, and we’ll weigh your recycling and give you a discount by the pound. Recycling must be in bins or clear bags where the contents are easily visible. No banning, strong incentive to recycle, easy to enforce, we just have to add a scale to all the trucks.

But really, no solution is going to be perfect, but some incentive needs to exist, since for some reason some people are too damn lazy to throw the cans, bottles, and paper in one bin and the rest of the garbage in another.

“But fine, we’ll weight your garbage and charge you by the pound, and we’ll weight your recycling and give you a discount by the pound. Recycling must be in bins or clear bags where the contents are easily visible. No banning, strong incentive to recycle, easy to enforce, we just have to add a scale to all the trucks.”

Ok, this I can see working on a large scale. GA.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities Did I actually type “weight”? Sheesh, I should pay more attention.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities In the UK they’re putting microchips into wheelie bins so they can monitor how much waste your house is creating….. they say they wont use it for determining charges in the future, but we all think they will.

It would be nice if it were mandatory, but I don’t know how it could be enforced. My city recently started a single stream recycling program. It’s much easier than what we did have. We now have two dumpsters. We put two trash cans in the kitchen. One is recycling the other is just trash.

Absolutely. It needs to be done on an individual, local, and state level and not just at the point of pickup but through out the chain for both citizens and corporations. There are any number of ways to educate people on it and enforce it, both positive and negative, all of which would likely need to be done in combination to elicit a useful result.

Also to add to some of the issues with fines I saw above, you could sort at the collection center (though our recycling people will remove stuff and leave in your driveway if it’s in a bin and not recyclable) and it’s not necessary to fine individuals, just raise the tax that pays for the sorting on the whole community until they get the message.

Our county provides mixed-recycle carts on wheels – huge – but you have to buy your own (plastic) garbage “cans”, and they charge per garbage can for pickup. They won’t pick up any garbage without providing a recycle cart, so people have learned to use those – it saves on garbage-can fees. I think it’s working really well. Although people don’t like to be told what to do, they also don’t like paying for services.

I think the San Franciscan recycling method should go nation wide. It’s simple and it works well.

Charging a deposit for recyclable material is a worthy way to encourage recycling without making it mandatory. It give an incentive for people to return the items for their money back, or for enterprising people to collect the discards to make extra income recycling. Some families work together collecting discards to supplement their income, even children can help.

@YARNLADY Deposits are a great idea. I wish we had substantial deposits on at least glass and plastic bottles and aluminum cans. The states that have deposits have the same ones they had when my father was a boy. What bought him a movie buys exactly zilch now.

Here in California, they are requiring charges on big ticket items which are not paid back when the item is returned. It is a ‘disposal fee’.

@YARNLADY Interesting, I think that’s the wrong approach on that one, it should be more of a deposit, and stores should handle the disposal. We need a strong incentive to dispose of electronics properly instead of just dumping them in the trash, and a deposit might do that. If you can’t get your money back then what incentive is there to properly dispose of electronics? How is it a disposal fee if you aren’t disposing of it other than in the landfill? I wonder who wrote that brilliant law?