Quote:
Originally Posted by tybuilding
|
I think we should make failing to recycle a crime, either at the consumer end or the collection end.
We can do like what some areas of Ontario do, where instead of putting trash in solid black trash bins, all trash needs to be in clear bags. Then the garbage man can leave behind trash he thinks contains recyclables and a bylaw officer can come by and issue a citation. Right now, in Vancouver, all you do is put all your trash in those giant black bins, and who cares. That's why there is so much waste here, government encourages it by giving large trash bins, small blue boxes and horribly awkward bags for paper, and then only collecting recycling every 2 weeks. Only recently, in some areas, have we made recycling better by allowing people to mix their recyclables. Most people are too lazy to sort through their own recycling, and then remember which week is the week to put it out. There is no incentive to recycle besides a clear conscience, its a lot of work with zero reward for success or punishment for failure.
The alternative is that waste collectors should sort the waste themselves. Other jurisdictions do this, where they have large facilities where they sort the garbage collected by trucks, piece by piece. Instead of having homeless run around downtown picking cans out of the trash, give them jobs in sorting plants. Remove the deposit from recyclables, and have the cities collect on the materials they gather. It can be cost and resource intensive, but can be covered as people would be willing to pay more to know that they don't have to worry about recycling anymore.
I currently live in a condo building, and recently Surrey switched to allowing mixed recycling. All recycling goes into the same container. It used to be the dumpster would be overflowing and the sorted recycling would be somewhat full (usually only with non flattened boxes). Now, every week, the 6 recycling bins are jam packed with containers, plastics, boxes and metals; and the dumpster only about half full. The building could easily fill 2 dumpsters with recycling for every garbage dumpster, and that's only been happening in the last few months. All because it's that much easier to do.
Why Vancouver still makes you sort recycling is beyond me.