If you didn't *have* to, would you still recycle your rubbish?

[JoySzasz]

I live in the US,in my small town it is not (as yet) the law to recycle anything!

I used to be very organized,all our 'trash' was correctly placed in the correct recycling bin.

Now I don't life has got way too hectic,and I noticed that all of my paper and plastic would end up strewn all over the lawn.

I opted to just do glass.

From friends and family back in the UK,I have learnt that there is no option -one must. Many of them hate all the various different bins etc...and have confessed they wouldn't bother if it was not the law.

So,if you didn't have to ...would you still bother?

Honestly ...?

Well, now I'm well-trained in the habit (thanks to our local council making it easy for us), then yes I would.

Yes, because I´m in Germany, & the bigger the bin for landfill, the more you pay.

linerunner I live where it is amazingly windy!

The only bins the trash guys would collect, were these open style ones.I say it as if there was a collection of bins,we were actually only allotted one...for everything

I suspect wild animals used to help it along also I washed it,but I guess that is where their excellent sense of smell came in.

My friends and family really feel they have no choice, using the word "law" was strong (I know)its just the way they have described it.

longtall your description is exactly how they have talked about things.
Giving me the impression, that they almost know one has recyclables in their ordinary trash.

There is no compulsion, you are given lots of bins, and if you fill your wheely with food it stinks, and there isn't much room. However our area has about 70% recycling according to the sign in the dump. (We have a wheely for real rubbish, collected fortnightly, a food bin and two recycle boxes collected weekly, and garden waste can be collected fortnightly.)
I bought a bin with two compartments, one for paper, one for cans/bottles etc. We have a kitchen food waste and a normal bin, it is no more bother than before, and even the kids are trained to put waste in the right bins.

Yes. I've been recycling for so many years now that I would find it almost impossible to put a glass jar in the bin - but then I do the works - foil, lightbulbs, batteries, cooking oil etc. Comes from having a really green boyfriend as a teenager - his habits rubbed off on me far more than he did

OP Why would your family and friends pretend that recycling in the UK is compulsory when it isn't?

Where on earth do you live that you have recycling bins without lids? We have mixed recyclables where I live (i.e. one bin, like you) and trust me, we have the technology for the lidded bin to be attached to the back of the collection vehicle and briskly emptied. And I don't even live in Future-Techno-Ville!

Our recycling bins are not lidded, its a nightmare, its V windy where we live too and add to that the bin men rummage through to make sure we are recycling correctly, it regularly ended up all over the garden/street so I no longer recycle that way. I take bottles to the bottle bank and other similar schemes but thats all. We recycle more plastic than anything anyway ( milk cartons and water bottles) and there are no recycling facilities for plastics here!

In some parts of the UK it is compulsory. In Greenwich, your bags are checked and you will get red carded if you are placing recyclable materials in general waste. They will not take any of your rubbish for you.

I love recyling. It appeals to my need for absolute order

I have been seperating stuff out for years and carefully placing it in the right bin. We take the rest to the dump.
Then we get a letter telling us we can stick it all in one wheely bin.

This makes me suspect the council have been picking up my carefully squashed and stored stuff and dumping it all in one place all along

Yes, did when you had to take stuff to the supermarket with you when you were doing a shop. Did it before I had a car ... BUT recycle much more now that we have roadside collection for some () plastics and most glass and paper. Our neighbours really bellyache about doing it. No one's houses are that big but they all have drives which are too small for cars so no one uses them for parking - so, storage space not a problem. I do wonder how efficient the recycled waste processing is though

I do think mostly it's because people can't be arsed (totally get that it is a lot harder in say a small flat or if you have problems lugging heavy boxes/bins). Attitudes need to change but councils could do more to promote recycling properly (emptying the supermarket plastics bins more than once in a month of sundays, for ex)

Yes, I used to even when we didn't have recycling bins. I'd save it all in the garage then every month or 6 we'd load up the car and trek around the various recycling points getting rid of it all. The garage was pretty much only used for saving recycling.

I thought it was fantastic when we moved to a new area and I could recycle everything I had done previously just by putting it in one of the bins outside.

Linerunner a bit ...

They genuinely feel it is compulsory.

You almost sound at my post?:)

I live in Indiana.

Some of my sources for this post live in Dorset,one lives in Cornwall; and lastly one of them lives in London (NW7) I think?

There are others I could list

Yup, I probably would. Grew up recycling glass, so it always felt wrong to chuck glass out even if I was being lazy about other things.

Where we live now you can't recycle quite as much, and I am a bit lazy and don't bother to hunt out where I can put the bits that I know can by recycled but that they don't collect.

I would probably still go glass, card, paper and plastic (and compostable if we had a big enough garden to do it ourselves)

No I wouldn't recycle. However, I would like our council to get on and build a recycling facility that automaticaly picked out the PET bottles, aluminium and steel cans and then burned all hte remaining waste to turn it into municipal heating and electricty. Then took the ash, crushed it and combined it with tar to make roaddfill.

Such plants do exist and it is 100% recycling that makes economic sense. Much more sense than faffing about collecting 2 bins and dumping half in landfill anyway.

I used to recycle most things in the UK, but now I'm in a flat and the idea of having lots of bins and rubbish hanging about in the kitchen is just a pain.

So now I don't really recycle anything except the odd bottle.

I'm not totally convinced domestic recycling is going to save the earth anyway, tbh....

Yes, my family have been recycling since the '60s and it is very little effort.

We have never had lidded recycling bins, but leave newspapers inside the house until is time for the fortnightly collection, so not too bad.

Everyone has a moral duty to do their best, circumstances permitting.

I live in wales, I don't have to but the local recycling scheme employs local people to sort the rubbish and turn it back into recycled plastic, toilet tissue etc... so love the scheme really.

One big box of paper and card per week.

One big box of tin cans and plastic and glass bottles per week.
One small black bin bag per week of unrecyclable stuff.
All fruit and veg waste goes in a compost heap in the garden.

Ours is optional here. But they make it fairly easy - black bag for rubbish, clear bag for tins/paper/card/foil/tetra etc. Glass at the local recycling plant.

I have had 2 bins in my kitchen for years, its natural now. Even the kids know what goes in which bin!

Yes! But we're a lot better at recycling plastic bottles now that the council collects them every fortnight as it was a right PITA having to remember to take the plastic on the rare occasion we went somewhere which had a plastics recycling bin.

Yes, we recycled long before it was the norm in this country. I don't like the idea of loads of recyclable stuff going into landfill.

Yes, I recycled a long time before we had special bins and have been taking my own shopping bags to supermarket for years and years! (dons halo !)

Yes I would recycle even if I didn't have to (and as far as I know I don't have to). We even paid for an independent kerbside collection scheme before our local council provided one, and still pay for one as they take a wider range of recyclables than the council collection! It's so much second nature now that I feel guilty even thinking about throwing a recyclable in a 'normal' bin and if I'm out and about, I'll take home any cans etc to put in my own recycling box

Yes - I grew up in Switzerland where it is just the way you do things. I have been recycling for years, even when we did not have the pick ups. We would just keep the stuff and drive to the drop offs.

I am frustrated by the fact that so many things could be recycled, but are not, where we now live. Am trying to bring my ds up to feel this is natural - my DH has already been indoctrinated.

Yes I would, it soon becomes second nature I've found and it's far more convenient now we have specific bins than it was when we used to take them along to recycling bins.