Recycling

Do you feel that recycling in your area is strongly encouraged and properly executed? Our discussion in class about the serious lack of knowledge when it comes to recycling really sparked my thinking about the topic. Not only is the awareness of recycling and it’s pros highly understated, but the general availability of recycling is truly lacking(at least at my home in Summerville.) It wasn’t until roughly 1 year ago that the stingy recycling company blessed my neighborhood with a full-sized 65 gallon recycling can for us to place our recyclables in! All of the time prior to this we were limited to a small 18 gallon recycling bin. For a family of 3 or more, it’s quite difficult to fit all of our recyclables in the bin (thanks Amazon Prime.) Do they really expect us to save our remaining recyclables for 2 more weeks until they return again? No, unfortunately I must put these extra boxes in the garbage bin. My point here is that recycling is encouraged, but we don’t have the physical ability to do so. Although I’m extremely happy now that we were so kindly upgraded to full-size recycling bins, I can recycle each and every product that I’m able to!

With my newfound ability to recycle all of my acceptable waste, I hope that the recycling companies are able to expand their services to other locations around Summerville that are lacking. As sad as it may be, if we don’t make recycling as accessible and easy as possible, most will not bother to do it. Therefore, going the extra mile and spending the money to provide everyone with recycling bins is totally worth it in the long run. While I’m on the topic, I also noticed that some of us have no clue what waste is actually recyclable, including myself until this point! Pizza boxes with grease on them isn’t allowed?! Why didn’t someone tell me sooner? Expansion of information about which products are recyclables and which are not is truly important! What’s the point of encouraging recycling if half of the products being recycled are not even allowed? That sounds very counterproductive if you ask me. Certainly more educating of the public must be implemented on something as simple as recycling. I sure hope I begin to see change in the near future.

One thought on “Recycling

  1. Thanks for the post, Natalie! I agree that it needs to be made more convenient and accessible for people to actually do it. We’ll talk more about recycling literacy later in this class, and hopefully you can help spread the knowledge!

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