10.24.2009

1 Recycling is Confusing

I will never understand why recycling isn't consistent between municipalities. We used to live in the Halton Region and could recycle just about everything. When we moved to the Waterloo Region I was surprised at the number of things we couldn't recycle.

I know that recycling plants are built and set up differently and therefore can handle different items but it just seems that there are too many differences. It is too bad that it isn't consistent so that people don't get confused and frustrated when they move to a new region. When we first moved here we got lots of those lovely little sticky notes on our recycling bin. Styrofoam - sorry we don't take that (but if you want to drive to our recycling plant we will take it off your hands). Tinfoil - I don't think so. Why not roll it into balls and let your cat play with it. Although I now see that we can recycle tinfoil - wonder when that happened.

I will take a sticky note over what happened a few months ago when we put out some cardboard. We had followed the rules and broken the boxes down. The recycling truck decided not to take it and left it at our curb. I watched as the garbage truck pulled up and threw the cardboard in the back. I didn't make it outside in time (I was 41 weeks pregnant) to tell them not to take it. Why not leave a note for the cardboard?

I totally understand why people get so confused and just give up recycling all together. Let's just wait and see how the confusion grows when the green box program is rolled out.

1 comment:

  1. My entire apartment complex had to put an end to its recycling program because apparently it was just too confusing and no one could get it right. I can't bear to think of how much stuff is going to the landfill that is definitely recyclable. I take our recyclables to a drop-off center a few miles away, but doubt most people take the time to do that. Sad.

    ReplyDelete