Editorial: Good recyclers, bad recyclers

(or, "How was I supposed to know that a deer carcass doesn't belong in the paper recycling bin?")

Basic premise: humans are lazy beings. If you make it easier for us to recycle than to throw away, we will likely do the recycling thing. Make it inconvenient to recycle and even the most environmentally conscious of us will let things seriously pile up before we deal with them (and the environmentally 'unconscious' will just toss everything away).

And then there are the folk who go to the trouble of recycling and do it wrong: putting the right stuff in the wrong place (e.g., plastics in the paper pin) or the wrong stuff in the right place (e.g., garbage in the recycling bin).(There are also the people who put the wrong stuff in the wrong place -- litterbugs -- but we won't talk about those insects today).

Here's the problem with recyclers not getting it right: humans are also social beings. We take our cues from each other. If we see newspapers in the recycling bin wrapped in plastic bags, then we assume that's how they should be treated. If there is a box of glass jars near the paper bin, we feel free to dump our glass there as well.

Basic premise #2: Humans, generally (okay, not all of us), want to do the right thing. Let us know that newspapers should be recycled loose and we will do it. Make sure we understand the processing problems caused by putting plastic in the cardboard bin and we will take more care. The flipside to this premise for recyclers is that if you don't provide options for all materials, well-meaning consumers will leave items for you to handle because they want to be doing the right thing. The only real way to fix this problem is for the recycler to expand the materials accepted.

[Source: November 2008 WasteWatch]

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