AIBU to think that my inlaws could recycle if theyactually tried?

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they are rich (13 bed house) and have 2 full time members of staff. Plus others. They told my milaw 'it's such a shame that we can't recycle because we just don't have the facilities' when pressed they said because they don't have kerbside collection (mind you maybe its the mile long drive that's the problem...)

aaarh!!!!!

i never mentioned sting or chris martin?

oh well,ignorance is bliss

If people recycle because they honestly believe they are helping their community then they deserve some credit for the thought even IF it didn't achieve anything.

Perhaps it does a bit, but it seems to me that governments have in mind some target of how much evironmental damage they can get away with and if individuals do their bit the governments and companies can then do less.

If I'm right then in the long run you gain nothing for your time and effort. My time and effort is not free and has a value to me. I won't allow some minister to fritter my time away on a whim.

I think the only way to save the planet is to have less people, not more and more people being more and more careful.

Personally, I haven't had to decide whether to recycle or not since I am one of those people who live in flats with a communal bin.

It's been said I should save up my rubbish and take it to a central point, but that's hardly practical.

For a start my flat is so small there is literally nowhere to put a row of extra bins unless I stand them in the middle of the living room. There is no 'outside' place that belongs to me,

I don't think keeping dirty stuff indoors is hygenic anyway. It depends what kind of rubbish it is. I suppose tins for example could be thoroughly washed, but that would mean using more water and washing up liquid which is apparently evil in itself.

I don't drive and wouldn't be able to carry it to the central point in my town so would have to take it on the bus. I think there'd be complaints about me taking up several seats especially with smelly rubbish bags

Also I hear about the way councils are fining people for putting their bins out too late, too early, too full, not full enough and so on and this fills me with resentment. I don't think I'd give in to that kind of bullying anyway even if I did think it served some purpose.

I'm also not sure how the alternative to recycling is carrier bags in trees and tampons on beaches. Perhaps they should be looking at how the refuse collection deal with the rubbish they take. Where I live half the communal bin contents are left on the ground when they leave anyway. I've no reason to think they are any more careful with people's carefully sorted recyling.

your local council needs to think harder about its refuse collection/recycling policies. where do you live? they neede to help people do it until its second nature

good post,greyriversude

i just wonder where supermarkets come into this?arent they guilty of over-packaging stuff?when i was little,for example,fresh produce was sold loose,and paper bags provided to put it in,now everything seems to be pre-packaged.and then theres those extra safety-seals on everything which(i think)were introduced after some incidents of animal rights extremists putting poisons in things.

surely tampon wrappers on the beach are due to them being flushed down the toilet?the only things i flush down the loo are the necessary!i re-use carrier bags to wrap food and as bin liners.i dont decorate trees with them.

i also dont get why people associate animal rights(intensive farming etc)with global warming?

Greyriverside: good post. Questioning the practicality of a council's recycling policy is not quite the same as 'Waaah, you don't CAAAARE about ANNYFINK you HORRIBLE PEOPLE'.

I am astonished at the laziness and ignorance on this thread. As other people have pointed out, recycling should be a basic part of our lives... as it was for centuries before we become a 'throwaway' society.

The excuses are amazing!! I recycle lots of stuff and it doesn't clutter up my home or take up much time at all. At the end of the washing up I rinse out my recycling (see, no extra resources used) and store it in an Ikea basket unit thing. Paper is collected from my blue bin but I used to do this myself too. When I go to the supermarket or am passing the tip/recycling point I simply put the baskets in the car.

I can't see how this is diffcult at all.

For me (and I do work in the recycling sector), the sooner we are charged for the amount of rubbish each household throws away the better, as unfortunately, and as this thread sadly illustrates, too many people just don't give a damn.

Maybe recycling won't stop climate change but it may make your kids think a bit more about dropping litter/being morally and ethically responsible and the general wider environment issue which is going to be of utmost importance in years to come.

Supermarkets clearly have a role to play. They insist that the over-packaging is essential because consumers demand it (I mean food packaging rather than carriers etc). I certainly don't demand it - it drives me mad!

I discovered one reason why they are so keen to have recycling centres in their car parks too. Whatever paper/cans/plastic that gets collected can be added towards their total recycling target. So they can claim they are actually recycling more than they really are. I prefer to leave it for the (admittedly inadequate) recycling collection or take it to the council dump.

I regularly question our council's recycling policy. It isn't good enough. It should be as easy as humanly possible. But as it is something that will benefit all of us, it isn't a them and us situation. It is helpful to complain constructively, but also to make an effort to do it for yourself (as far as you can).

I agree that supermarkets, and in fact, commercial waste in general is a far greater problem than household waste. The cost of landfilling waste is rising fast though and companies are not being forced to look at waste reduction and recycling - this also supports my wish for household charging. It all comes down to econmonics in this world.

As with everything in life though, if you start by doing things yourself then maybe others will follow suit and if you beleive in a better environment then start small and do your bit.

Agree with OrmIrian, most products are ridiculously over packaged.

Like a lot of people I find it hard to make time to frequent local shops where I can bring my own bags and choose fresh produce with minimal wrapping. TBH as I hate going to the supermarket I use Tesco online .

So at least by recycling I am doing a weeny weeny bit to redress the balance of my consumer lifestyle.

Yes its likely that at this current point in time the engery used to recycle may not represent much of an improvement, but it's not a huge effort, and hopefully in the future they will have better methods for recycling.

I am really struggling to understand why some people are so rabidly anti-recycling. Fair enough if you haven't got facilities on your doorstep but if you have then really you just need to grow up and get on with it.

I think that "you just need to grow up and get on with it" is an ignorant and patronising thing to say, not to mention holier than thou. Recycling fans who try to impose their opinions on other people I think are counter productive against their own ends in the way that I believe Jehovah's witnesses are about converting people to religion.

I'm not particularly against recycling but I am against being preached to.

DarthVader - totally agree with you. Some people just like bossing everyone else about. They just jump on whatever bandwagon seems trendiest.

DV, I can't see how you can compare people who recycle (a normal and practical thing to do in everyday life) to JWs (a religous order).

How odd that you take such offence at people saying you should recycle. Have you ever been to a landfill site or even seen one on TV? How can you think there is not a problem???

so am i DV but then Jehovahs Witnesses dont try to convert eople to religion they try to convert people to becomeJehovah's Witnesses.
recycling isnt about choice its a no brainer. recycle or the planet gets it (as my local councils strapline goes). and thats my planet and your planet and all of our children's too.

wooh, LL, cross posting, same point

OFGS.

If you have recycling boxes at your disposal and a regular collection then you do not need to be an "eco facist" or whatever you care to call it. You just need to sort out your rubbish in the boxes that the council have asked for, takes 5-10 mins per day including putting out the boxes.

I have never considered myself to be a recycling fan. I just follow the instructions set by my local authority. Its hardly difficult and doesn't require any ethical philosophising on my part.

But do what you want, can't wait till they bring the fines in for non-recyclers now, until getting involved in this thread I thought they were a bit mean, but now I say bring it on.

doesnt even take me that long. i really cannot see what is so difficult about it. easier than cleaning your teeth.

Rookiemater - never said I don't recycle. Just that I don't want other people thinking they have the right to get on their high moral horse over it. Besides if you that environmenally aware you wouldn't have had children and contributed to overpoputlating the world would you?

Aha, but then who's left to breed the next generation of people with a brain who give a shit??

I'm not that environmentally aware tbh, quite happy to fly on holiday at the drop of a hat and not a woven lentil in sight.

I just think that recycling is such an easy way of making a difference that it seems daft not to do it or to try to persuade others to do it as well.

I don't pester my parents much about it as at the end of the day it is their decision, but it does disappoint me slightly that they won't make the effort.

But I like lls respnse much better

laundrylover, good point about the 'rinsing after the washing up' since that uses nothing extra. I'm not so sure about storing a week/fortnight's recycling in baskets. I'd need to move them to open my fridge so I have to assume you have a bigger kitchen than I do.

Perhaps others could 'put the baskets in the car' but that isn't an option for me. Also I guess I gain some points for walking to the supermarket, though I do have to use tescos delivery some of the time.

As for dropping litter in the streets I haven't done that since I was a toddler and probably not then. I remember how we used to eat some sweets and carefully hand the wrapper to our mother who would put them in her shopping bag to dispose of later. Nowadays wrappers go in my pocket the same way. I can't imagine just dropping it.

Mind you I also have a sharp memory of walking down my street (behind the shops in green street, upton park) and putting some paper in my pocket even though I was wading through tonnes of cardboard and other litter simply dumped there by the shops owners.

Although I wouldn't dream of dropping litter, if a scrap of wrapper escaped me and blew down the street I wouldn't chase after it. That could get me fined now, but I'll take that chance since that's what I employ street cleaning services for, just as I pay the council to dispose of my rubbish. If they want me to take it on part time I shall expect minimum wage or they can give the job to someone unemployed who needs it more.

OrmIrian, I'm sick of over-packaging myself. I could carry more in one trip without it and wouldn't then have to fill the bin with it. As for those stiff plastic covers they seal things in I always find myself turning them around and around looking for the secret way in. I generally hack at them with a sharp knife these days until they surrender.

My DH is worse than me. When he buys stuff at the supermarket he tries to take some of the packaging off there and then so he doesn't need to take it home with him. "Eco fascist" as I apparently am, I find that somewhat embarassing.

Councils and supermarkets could make life a lot easier by cutting down on excess packaging and providing doorstep recyclables collection for more people.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't recycle now who would do so if it were made less of a chore.

There are some though who still don't bother even if you make it as easy as possible. In my case, where I used to live, everyone had 2 wheelie bins. One green, for cans, paper, carboard, plastic etc. One grey for anything else. Some neighbours still didn't bother to seperate their rubbish and put mixed bags into my bins.

Greyriverside, my post wasn't aimed at you in particularly - it is more difficult in a flat and councils need to do much more to address this issue. However I lived in London, in a one bed flat, for years and was carless and still recycled...can't remember my system though! I suppose I recycled more often? Think I had a plastic box in a cupboard....and then probably took it in a bag on my bike or by foot.

I am lucky now as I have a back porch that holds my 'system' right my the kitchen door. I also have a compost bin in the garden but had one in my backyard at previous houses - they work fine on hard surfaces....

it is about trying to mak it easier still even for the really ignorant people who find it so hard to see the point. ilike the idea of fines now (was ambivilent before this thread) and cant wait to rub my hands at glee about them all complaining AIBU when they get their fines. yes and i did have my beautiful intelligent child to amke sure there was someone around with brains after i died fgs cant rely on some of these Other Posters to do it clearly