Ageist Recycling Trends

So...something I've noticed as we've moved across the country is that the farther you go to the East, the less likely people are to recycle. It's as though the oldest colonized areas are the least likely to have friendly recycling programs. Is that because they've had longer to pollute those places and hold out less hope for a less polluted future? Or...has it been dirty so long they don't know what clean looks like? Is it entrenched tradition? This is how we've always done it and we don't need to change? Or is it sloth? We don't want to change because it's too much work?

My secret jerkwad answer, when I'm feeling prickly, is that the folks who made it out West were looking for change from their East Coast past and were stubborn enough to make it out West. They're innovators. Where people who stayed liked things the way they were or were lazy. Unpopular idea that one. But hey...

Or maybe it's cheapskate, asshole, lawmakers...I bet there's a connection between curbside access to recycling and recycling education and ACTUAL recycling by the citizenry. Who knows? Maybe the independent recycling companies make deals with cities and lawmakers for their own gain, or...maybe these asshats just don't care and are too busy worrying about the "War on Christmas" to care about real issues...but I digress.


               youngest states....                                                                          ...oldest states

(stolen from vertvogue.blogspot.com)

Examples. Growing up in the greater Seattle area means learning to recycle as second nature, we learn the importance of the Salmon life cycle and why we shouldn't dump oil and chemicals down the drain. It's pretty easy to recycle, most trash cans have a nearby co-mingle recycle can, even in every classroom there was a little blue recycle can. Not only did each house have recycling, it was included in your city trash pickup for free! And if they found you putting recyclables in your trash you'd be fined.

In Chicago, we lived in a 55-story high rise in downtown. There was a trash chute for the whole building, but until the second year we were there--2011--there was no easy recycle. You had to take your recyclables down to the loading dock. The trash was too easy, and the recycling too hard. That said when we did get a recycling area on each floor, the setup was easy to fill up with boxes, so I'd imagine others didn't sort their things like they should. But there were recycle containers on the street and solar compactor trash cans (kinda neat!). It wasn't uncommon to see people just throw trash on the ground (more often than Seattle). Where's your civic pride?! Chicagoans are so "house proud" about there city--and yet?

Here in Lynchburg, the city has no curbside recycle pickup. The college has only recently started a vague co-mingle recycling program, but they put co-mingle labels over containers that you can still see the old stickers that say "paper only" and left specifically-shaped holes in recycling containers that are really sending a mixed message to an already apathetic group. Heck, even faculty isn't quite sure of our recycling program. There are trash cans in every room, but only two or three large recycle containers per building. No one really seems to care. The city has 11 recycling drop locations. I couldn't pay the city a little extra to take my recyclables if I wanted to. Dr. husband grumbled when I would save up plastic bags to take to the grocery store to recycle, so I don't think he's on board with filling the car up with recyclables to take to the drop site. So we pay something like $10-14 a month to get a separate company to come take our recyclables--but at least they do styrofoam? I don't know. How do you make people who don't see a problem and don't seem to care, care? If nothing else, the city should make it easy and do curbside pickup because it will let our landfill last longer.

Now that makes financial sense.