To be annoyed that my dad barely recycles?

[Danceintherain2018]

He's in his 60s so not old by any means but he refuses to recycle anything apart from cardboard and newspaper and says it's a generation thing.
I know plenty of people in their 60s who recycle but he flat out refuses to go beyond newspaper and cardboard. It's not even that he doesn't know what he can recycle, he just doesn't care. He uses a lot of cans and bottles which could all be recycled.

Anytime I am round I take what I can home with me but it drives me nuts!

AIBU? How can I make him recycle more? He's having to change his kitchen bin regularly as it gets full with all the stuff he could by recycling.

It's always the little things that grate in the middle of the night isn't it!

It's not really hard to recycle, so hard to understand why people don't. It's just putting stuff in a different bin!

I recycle everything I can, but I am concerned about what happens to the recycling. Shipping to Far East seems crazy.

I'm not in the UK but here we pay 65 euro cents per 35 litre bag of general waste, which is an incentive to recycle. No collection for recycling but there are recycling points everywhere (our small village has two, one at either end). The recycle bins are clearly marked with what you can put in, but when I open the lid of the plastics/metal one (which is basically for plastic bottles, drinks cans and tin cans) I see all kinds of stuff that shouldn't be in there - yoghurt pots, meat trays, plastic bags, polystyrene... how could all that stuff be sorted out? I'm sure people just bung everything in because we pay by volume for general waste

Parents and PIL in their 70s and 80s and all recycle - my mum is pretty obsessive! And I remember going to the 'bottle bank' in the 1980s (maybe even 1970s) with my Dad. So recycling has been a 'thing' for long enough for older people to have got into the habit, surely.

@Twotabbycats

Problem is we don't know what happens to our recycling efforts. Where does it go? China has refused to accept any more of our recyclables.

Anyway I laugh to think we were separating everything, only to have a tanker go half way around the world (fuel and so on) to recycle it. Mad.

I want to know where it is going now! I bet it's landfill or incinerators and it's all a big con job anyway.

keyboardkate metals, glass and paper gets recycled here in the U.K. .not sure about cardboard , our amazon society has made that one trickier. Think it may go to Europe - NL?

The issue is always plastics and as I said earlier if they are incinerated here in the U.K. at modern heat and power energy from waste plants I think that is a good thing.

2bees.

Yes I think anything other than paper glass or cardboard is incinerated. I may be a sceptic, but in the absence of any evidence to the contrary I agree with you.

Makes a mockery of all this separation of stuff. But it might make people think they are doing the right thing.

I don't understand why these people are so passionate about it. It won't make a difference and ends up in landfill most of the time anyway. I can't imagine why anyone would be SO obsessed with what happens a to their rubbish unless they didn't have much to feel good about in their life. It's really sad and such a total waste of time. Middle England housewives recycling a few milk cartons isn't going to do anything. I dont give a fuck about recycling but I do give up a month a year to work in Sudan tracking British girls sent for FGM. Not caring about something someone else does isnt a crime. Its jusy good that not everyone is in Middle England or it would be over populated and that is apparently not very eco friendly.

*Middle England housewives recycling a few milk cartons isn't going to do anything" Small and achievable goals help get people on board for the big stuff.

I dont give a fuck about recycling but I do give up a month a year to work in Sudan tracking British girls sent for FGM

Good for you. And how sure are you that what you do has an outcome, i.e. not just tracking? Now send a link so that others can do this.

And while you're at you can re-cycle.

My DH is in his 40s and refuses to recycle. It's because h can't be bothered and he doesn't care. I have to go through the landfill bin and pick out the recycling items. There's no point getting worked up about something you can't change. I get my revenge by going "Mummy Pig on the computer" every time he gets a spreadsheet out. Bash bash bing bong what have you done you haven't formatted it properly! It doesn't matter it all ends up in the same place anyway (his argument to me about the recycling bin)

@keyboardkate metal is recycled as money can be made from it. There use to be a cash for cans point at one of the supermarkets I use.

We have food recycling in my borough but unlike some councils they don't allow us to come and buy the compost made from it cheaply.

Clothing is recycled but causes an ethical problem. A lot of it from the UK is sold on to countries in the developing world which has decimated their own textile industries.

Plastics are a different matter. Some are recycled but most is probably incinerated or shipped abroad.

Electronics and batteries are frequently dumped in developing countries. Even when governments have banned the import of broken electronics, often due to corruption, they still end up there.

It's a mindset and you can do things like re using bags and I avoid putting my loose veg/fruit in plastic bags at supermarket.

I agree it's depressing when the outcome is sending it to China and if it ultimately ends up in the sea.

It's awful in the landfill as well so why not just do it where possible?

Recycling is, as many have pointed out, not much use on it's own.
I've been making an effort over the last couple of months to reduce our waste. We've got it down to one swing bin s fortnight and I'm sure we can get it lower.
We have a hot composting bin - all food waste, and dirty paper (e.g. baking paper) goes in there.
I make about half our bread or we buy in paper (bread maker, or no knead)
We get most of our veg from a veg box, or the market stall where we take our own bags (and it's dirt cheap!)
The fish stall is also v cheap and I take a Tupperware.
And there's a butcher that lets you do that too.
Health food shop also lets you take your own bags.
Milk and orange juice in glass from the milkman.
Keep most jars to make jam - I take our own containers to the PYO (which is also massive fun for the DCs)
Ditto bottles for cordial, Soda Stream for fizzy.
So we've got our recycling down too - it mainly seems to be cans at the moment!

Our council collect food waste.

It was on BBC breakfast this morning that over half of UK recycling ends up in landfill or incinerators overseas.

Makes washing all that rubbish sound utterly pointless doesn't it?

Yes I saw that. Quite depressing

OOH some recycling is being put to use again so I will keep doing what I can

I didn’t say don’t do it - but there are environmental consequences. So the people who are holier-than-thou about it and then trot off on a plane without a second thought are a bit hypocritical.

We have a big garage thing outside my block of flats with 8 big dumpster style bins in but no recycling bins in there, and no recycling collection!
I throw glass and cardboard in the bin (I know) but keep plastic and it comes with me to the supermarket and I recycle it there!

I have a cupboard in my kitchen that we put the plastic in so we don’t have to look at it 😂

People also need to be using recycled products more. It's pretty disgraceful that recycled paper loo roll and tissues are still not the mainstream default.

Taxes and subsidies also need to be used to rebalance things, to make non-recycled and other more resource-heavy products relatively more expensive and items with a lower impact cheaper than they often are at present.

This massively irritates me too. However, IME, it gets far worse in any kind of group gathering where food/drink are involved. People who quite probably (or possibly not, reading the above) diligently recycle all of their stuff at home, instantly forget to bother when there is a number of people present. Even if you put out a second bin and clearly label it recycling, some people will use it properly, but an awful lot will still just ignore the notice, think "It's a bin" and lob anything in any bin. Manky teabags and runny plate scrapings then cover all of the otherwise easily-dealt-with plastic bottles and cardboard packaging.

Worst of all, though, are people who throw EVERYTHING away. I was reminded of this by another thread posted by a woman whose DH threw important DLA forms and clothes in the bin. I'm not talking about people who are just efficient or thorough (even ruthless) when sorting actual rubbish, but there's a certain kind of person who, if they don't know within 2 seconds what to do with an item, they instinctively just bin it. It might be something like a book, an old-but-working mobile phone, a bag (handbag/rucksack - not carrier) etc. It could be something of clear use or value (to somebody else, even if it's theirs and they don't want it), but it might belong to somebody else, it might be very easily recyclable, food-bankable or charity-shoppable. It might even be something that they themselves will certainly need in the near future, but instead of finding a suitable cupboard or shelf to put it in/on, they just bin it.

See also, people who decide to replace/upgrade a slightly old, possibly shabby but perfectly functional piece of furniture or electronic item (fine - entirely up to them) but then drive to the tip and toss it into the bottom of the skip there (maybe not even the appropriate skip). They could have found a very grateful home for it by giving it to a charity shop, a charity helping vulnerable and/or very poor people trying to kit out a new home (plenty will collect free of charge), Freecycled it or even made some quick money by selling it themselves.

DH and I were talking about this y'day.

He is of the understanding (from reading around not some arbitrary thought!) that the Middle East are also taking our rubbish as they are working out how to harness the heat from incineration and selling the technology - forward thinking on their behalf as to what they'll do when the oil runs out.

Our council collect food waste
Ours used to, it was great. Then they decided it cost too much.

buffetsausage there is nothing you say thatbeventhe indifferent like.me can argue with.
It's one thing to not care much or believe a great deal is achieved by Tunbridge Wells council but to throw stuff away, sometimes as a demonstration of wealth is obscene. I never fail to be amazed how quickly free things are snapped up, both here in Qatar and in the UK when I am clearing out. Shame on people who chuck stuff away because they "hate clutter" etc. Just put it up on Freecycle.

My DF is the same; he says it all goes in landfill anyway (no idea if that's true). Is it really true that one slightly dirty things means the whole lot is chucked out? I checked on my council's recycling info page and there's nothing on there about washing it all out; surely they should tell people if that's the case....I'm surprised anything gets recycled tbh as I've seen the rubbish that the neighbours put in their boxes. As pp have said, the best thing to do is probably use less in the first place (especially plastic), obv carry on recycling but just try and reduce the amount of waste in general, this will probably have more impact.

If you have the hassle of recycling tins and plastic then you will or might hesitate when buying it in the first place. If you don't recycle I'd think you were more likely to chuck anything in the trolley.

I always wash out the tins, jars etc as they go in a bin inside in the recycling bag