Home » The Council Is Really Beginning To Get This Recycling Thing - Easy is the Word

Reprint

There are very few things more tediously boring than sorting through mountains of waste to be recycled, reading bin literature (Huckleberry Bin anyone?), heaving heavy bags filled with catalogues down the drive and having binmen attacking your bins with contaminated stickers. The truth is that we really just want to shove our waste in a bin and have it vanish mysteriously once a week.

Whatever is most convenient is what will work best. If people had to travel a few miles to recycle I guess they just wouldn't bother. How far would you be willing to travel to recycle?

For the vast majority of people it's the end of there drive. Thus the only way the councils are going to succeed in their recycling program is if they make it easy.

I'm delighted to tell you that is the way it's going. For instance, when the recycling scheme first started you had to separate your waste into three separate groups, each of which went into three separate bags namely: plastics, paper and cardboard and general waste. It was quite a nuisance - especially when you were used to shoving everything in one bag and being done with it. Then the council decided to make things easier (you may want to re-read that sentence and rub your eyes) by letting you put the plastics, papers and cardboards in the same bag. Just today they decided to do away with bags for recycling altogether by giving you a free bin to just shove it in.

@pagebreak

There are two approaches the council could take to increase recycling. It goes back to the old carrot and stick idea. They will dangle the carrot with: 'we'll try to make recycling easier so that you are more motivated to do it' and then wave the stick of: 'if you don't we won't collect it'. This tactic appears to be working pretty well: some areas have reached over 40% of waste being recycled.

Perhaps if the government ran an advertising campaign saying that the French are better at recycling than the British we could see an exponential increase in recycling. It is often joked that Britain did not really want the Olympics in 2012 and it was only when we found out the French wanted it did we gave a damn. Yes, it is a little vain but, look on the bright side, we might even be more vain than the French!

Another pleasant surprise I got was reading the little bit of bin literature they gave out with the new bin. The things I liked were: the pretty pictures (well the pictures were of rubbish but it did add to the overall "endureability" of the thing), the bullet points, the little green ticks and red crosses and the plain English it's written in. That is what people want.

Recycling is not all that much bother - its easy and it works. You can educate people until you are blue in the face about recycling and, yes, this is good, but if it is too much hassle people will give up and sneak things into the general waste. Less effort means more efficiency which, in turn, means more effective recycling.

My last suggestion is addressed to the council. I would like them to recycle this article because it may be along time until they will find such complimentary articles again. They are in very short supply you know.