Recycling – Do you actually, genuinely care?

I’m of the age group where when I was young, we had one rubbish bin. Everything went in it, everything went in the dustbin and once a week, the dustmen came and emptied it. Over the years, recycling has become a big thing and although I understand it, I really don’t particularly care about it! Mrs. Feek is always banging on and trying to make sure I put the right things in the right boxes so she can sort all the recycling out but I just have no interest in doing it. As a result, I’m not allowed near the weekly/fortnightly rubbish collecting boxes we have and she puts the correct ones out so they can be collected on the appropriate day.

Am I alone in this? Is there anyone else who really doesn’t care about recycling waste? Is this just an age thing where I was dragged up in an era when recycling didn’t exist and I’m a dinosaur.

I don't recycle as much as i used to,i don't even wash things out like you are meant to,i don't recycle glass either,goes in the black bin.

Surely anyone capable of rational thought should 'care' about recycling

Re-using stuff > burying it in the ground?

I don't go out of my way to recycle except for glass. Everything else goes in the one bin. Will recycle in work though as it doesn't seem as much hassle.
Think it was helped by getting warned about some stuff in the wrong bin though a few years ago and so I decided it was safer to not bother

I think behaving in a sustainable way is vital. I think it is almost criminal to still be using land fill sites. Recycling may be only a tiny proportion of what we can do to change societal behaviours towards waste and over indulgence, greed and selfishness. However I used to be a "meh" person and didn't really care or couldn't be bothered to do it, but as I've become older and more aware I realised more and more the importance of it. It does make sense to do and the more it is done, I would hope (perhaps blindly) that some good can come of it. It is now second nature and not really a chore at all.

[TW]Fox;29838261 said:

Surely anyone capable of rational thought should 'care' about recycling

Re-using stuff > burying it in the ground?

Click to expand...

pretty much this. i try and make sure stuff goes in the right bins where possible.

id prefer work to do the same but after speaking to the cleaner it seems nobody bothered to put the right things in the right bins so they scrapped it.

When it first came in I thought it was going to be a total chore, now it's just second nature, I don't even think about it.

I actually quite like popping out to the recycling bin, get a breath of fresh air, say hello to a neighbour, save a polar bear etc.

Yes. I believe we should be doing as much as possible to limit the damage we do to the planet, especially if it is as easy as placing a item in the correct bin.

I do it, however this does not mean I care about it.

I am naturally a wasteful person who will happily pollute and waste power, but re-using waste rather than landfilling the lot does seem very logical to me.

Recycling in Oxfordshire (perhaps it is easier via our council than yours, Feek?)...you just chuck anything plastic, metal, glass or paper into the recycling bin, and anything else into the waste bin.

The need to separate everything sounds like a pain and I would assume is a hindrance to people recycling.

In Worcester we just have a recycling wheelie bin and anything that can be recycled goes in there.

[TW]Fox;29838261 said:

Surely anyone capable of rational thought should 'care' about recycling

Re-using stuff > burying it in the ground?

Click to expand...

This.

It's very irresponsible not to recycle, and just mad to not even care about it.

Not exactly a taxing chore to put in the correct bin. Every little helps so we do our bit.

I am of a similar age. Indeed, I remember when Bin men were Real Bin Men and actually came down the driveway carrying huge buckets on their backs, Emptied the bins (which were by the back door) into them and carried the rubbish back up the driveway to the bin lorry!

But, that aside, I do make an effort to do the recycling (fortunately we do have only two bins where we live, unlike the multitude that some people have to endure.)

However, I would prefer not to have to throw so much stuff away in the first place.

I also remember the days when practically everything was returnable for reuse and that which was not tended to last a very very long time.

The only consumer good that tended not to last was Motor cars because back then the manufacturers only painted the bits you could see so by the time they were ten years old they had undersides like colanders! Nowadays cars are much better constructed (in the main) but shockingly the average age at scrapping hasn't really changed that much.

Something has gone badly wrong.

The recycling fad is a symptom of the disease rather than a part of the cure.

It is a way of conning people into continuing with our shockingly wasteful consumerist life style with a clearish conscience.

Not doing it is sheer laziness for the amount of time it takes. It's important we do what we can so the amount that goes in the ground, for future generations to have deal with, is reduced.

I'd add wastage of food into this too - getting excess again is laziness and a bad habit - buy what you need and don't waste where possible when there are people with not enough in the world. And pressure supermarkets to stop their wastage. Buy local, by in season and only buy what you need.

It's about having some consideration and responsibility imo.

I'm a big advocate of recycling, I wish I could easily recycle more. We have a bin with separate compartments for normal waste and recycling, and two wheelie bins on our drive. We also have a food waste bin but I don't really see the point of that, as food just rots to nothing on a landfill anyway. It does jar with me how many black bin bags we still use, full of things like nappies, plastics that we can't put in our recycle bin etc.

I did read a while ago that there were councils shipping the collected recycling waste to India to be picked through, which totally nullified any benefits of separating your rubbish.

Orionaut said:

However, I would prefer not to have to throw so much stuff away in the first place.

Click to expand...

Well said.

Orionaut said:

The only consumer good that tended not to last was Motor cars because back then the manufacturers only painted the bits you could see so by the time they were ten years old they had undersides like colanders! Nowadays cars are much better constructed (in the main) but shockingly the average age at scrapping hasn't really changed that much

Click to expand...

Totally understandable. If anything i would say that the average age of a car being as long as it was back then, in our throwaway society, then that is a testament to how well built they are these days.

• Relative value of cars has gone down sharply since those days due to a massive supply (A car is only ever scrapped due to its value being perceived as not worth repairing).
  
• Cars are also far more complicated than they once were leading to very complicated and expensive faults when they are old.

There were talks last year of fining people who don't recycle at all, I'm all for it to be honest. It's pure laziness, nothing to do with being interested.

I recycle everything I can, it takes seconds to do and have bins for card /paper, glass, plastic etc.

There is no excuse not to.

I don't use my food waste bin though, we have compost so shove it on that.