Why do many communites mandate recycling? It is possible induce people to recycle more without requiring that?

Question

without requiring that all residents recycle?

Answer 1

They tried inducement, it did not work enough . . .
Still too much garbage because too many humans LAZY (although they say they are just too busy) . .
So mandatory goooood, as we ran low on landfill space a long time ago (check those wandering trash barges from the east coast USA looking for a place to dump their loads)

Answer 2

I believe it is possible to induce people to recycle more without requiring it. Here's how they do it in my town: Each household gets one trash container from the city. That is the maximum amount of trash you can have every week. They will not pick up trash in other containers or from the ground.

Then, once a month, they also pick up your recyclables. We place all the recyclables in blue bags. We don't even have to separate it. It makes it very easy.

Also, a household can opt to have a half-size trash container and pay less on their garbage bill every month. It is possible to get more trash containers, but you have to pay more on you bill.

I think they have encouraged people to recycle by limiting the amount of trash and by making the recycling so easy.

Answer 3

Just do what they do in Switzerland. They sell garbage bags with a special printing on them and the cost of pick up is included in the bags. There is a hefty fine for not using the bags and they are expensive. So you learn to fold your trash, etc.

THEN... they make recycling free. It's amazing what you will recycle to save a buck! They have more glass than they know what to do with. LOL

Answer 4

the reason for mandating: it costs $$MONEY$$ to throw your trash in the landfill - and, unless you pay for private trash collection - your city pays that bill every week....which means that your tax dollars pay that bill. so - when trash disposal fees outpace tax revenues....cities have a choice: raise taxes - or - mandate recycling. recycling has a direct impact on trash disposal fees by reducing the volume of trash going to the landfill. and - politically - listening to people complain about "mandatory blah, blah, blah..." is MUCH more palatable to a politician ( say a city council member ) than being voted out of office for increasing taxes ;)

that's the *why*

now - is it possible to induce people to do it voluntarily? to an extent, sure. education about reducing landfill wastes, tying it into the "keeping your costs down" argument, making them feel good about doing it for environmental reasons. PAYING them for the scrap metal....all interesting ways to accomplish that goal.

Answer 5

It is required to mandate recycling as there i too much rubbish that we humans are producing everyday and there is no other way to do it.

Answer 6

Fleshing out (or perhaps challenging) some of the answers given by others:

Back in the 1980's, the USEPA published a somewhat politically-motivated technical report to the effect that the nation was going to run out of landfill space within a decade or so. This report prompted a lot of Federal and State policymakers to undertake a variety of legislative initiatives intended to extend the life of the nation's landfills. The focus of these initiatives was to reduce the amount (or volume) of waste that needed to be landfilled by (initially) encouraging the population to reduce the amount of waste they generate, and recycle what waste was made. Waste reduction and recycling is very difficult, as it requires changes in habit, changes in business and living practices, and it costs more money (certainly, in the short term, and arguably also in the long term).

Almost immediately, the conclusion of most governing bodies was that the only way to get communities to reduce the amount of waste that needed to be landfilled was to MAKE them recycle, and thus the nation became littered with State and local laws banning a variety of easily-recycled materials from the landfill. Almost every community in the USA now recycles newspapers, bottles and cans, yard waste, and selected plastic items as a result.

Federal and many State laws require minimum recycling rates within local jurisdictions (e.g., the State of Virginia has a mandatory recycling rate of 25 percent). Failure to meet these minimums bring with them a variety of "punishments", such as loss of grants and other funding, or the loss of certain legal authorities to build new landfills and other infrastructure related to waste management.

As a result, local governments are all but compelled to mandate recycling by law, as a means of meeting Federal and State minimum recycling rates.

With respect to inducing people to recycle without requiring it by law, this question is generally a good one for just about any good social practice. Many communities mandate certain speed limits and other public safety laws, for all the obvious reasons. Even while it might be theoretically possible to induce people to drive more safely (rather than pass laws requiring it), I hope you can see that this type of outreach and voluntary aproach rarely works.

In the area of encouraging good environmental practices, sadly humans do not have a good record. Almost every environmental protection law on the books started out in life as a voluntary measure, only to find that most citizens and businesses failed to comply out of common sense. There's always a big chunk of any population that simply won't change their habits, or do the right thing, simply because it makes good sense.

Now, one important epilogue to this story is the underlying reason for recycling. That USEPA prediction that we were going to run out of landfill space proved to be VERY, VERY wrong, and the USA has more than enough landfill space (and good places to build clean, safe landfills) practically forever. New technology allows landfill owners to extract energy resources from the buried waste, and to undertake other practices that effectively "mine" the resources from the buried waste and create new space. Also, a number of countries (including limited examples in the USA) have moved to using the waste to fuel power plants, effectively recycling the waste into electricity or another energy resource.

Now, climbing up on my own personal soap-box for a minute, I note that there continues to be a great call for recycling from within the environmentalist movement (as evidenced by some of the answers posted here). Often, these people will cite old information with respect to shrinking availability of landfill space, or other outdated arguments with respect to landfill impacts on natural resources. These arguments are largely fallacious, as almost all of the old problems with landfilling have been resolved through good, modern engineering design and the application of science and technology.

I believe that the cry for recycling hides a deeper agenda on the part of the "green" movement. Specifically, the core argument appears to center around sustainable living practices, i.e., people should modify their lifestyles to all but eliminate the use of any product that results in waste. Thus, for example, we should return to purchasing milk in glass bottles, with customers returning empty bottles to the place where the milk was purchased. That way, no new waste is generated with every purchase of milk. Superficially, this example and practices like it make a lot of sense, but often fail to yield actual environmental benefits when considered on the global scale of human health and environmental concerns. Glass bottles are heavier, requiring more energy to transport them, handle them, etc., and the return loop for the empty containers consumes more energy for use to clean them, transport them, etc. Often, a holistic analysis of these so-called "green" policies discovers that they do more environmental damage than good. A great example of this is the German EPA's evaluation of paper versus plastic grocery bags. This study concluded that plastic bags are better for the environment!

OK, OK, a long answer to a short question. Hopefully, you found this useful, and I welcome considered and polite debate with other readers who chose to disagree with my answer.

Answer 7

I don't get it. It SHOULD be required.

Answer 8

...it being required is a GOOD thing....

Answer 9

no