Where we live we have mandatory recycling. The "garbage police" don't go through your trash to see if you offend, but I'm sure they would do something if there is a blatant problem though. Garbage pick-up is free, but limited to 2 bags per house which I find to be more than sufficient. We also have a bin for compost-type materials (kitchen waste) as well as a couple bins for recyclable items. At first I thought mandatory recycling was too much control by the government, but I think otherwise now. I'm pleased that waste is being reduced in our consumer driven society. After getting into the practice of recycling it really isn't too hard. I just put the items to be recycled in a different place than the trash. I've lived in places where I have not recycled at all because it was quite labor intensive and picky. By that, I mean I would have to put all recycled items into my own container, transport it to the recycling center, and then separate the recycled items into their appropriate categories. Now, I just put everything in one or two bins and they pick it up at the curb and separate it themselves. Anyone else have mandatory recycling? How many bags of trash does your family put out by the curb each week? Do you recycle?
Our community has had recycling since the early 1970's and we now have mandatory curbside recycling. As you said, nobody really checks, but they encourage it by making you pay for garbage by the amount you put out each week. We are a family of seven and we get by with one regular size garbage can a week.
That's really neat! We have voluntary recycling here. The city gives us a big green trash can, and picks it up every 2 weeks. We have a big black bin the same size for regular trash. We used to just have a little green box for recyclables, and a very short list of acceptable items in it. I've noticed that since the city started using the big green cans, and allowing us to put more kinds of plastic, and even glass in them, more people are using them.
We live in a more rural area that does not have city pick-up. You could pay for an independent company to pick up, but that's out of our budget, so we just have to burn ours. I really can't get into recycling. I compost my kitchen waste, but everything else just gets tossed. As far as volume of trash, I feel kind of bad now hearing about you all. I put out a bag of trash every other day or sometimes even every day,if it's a cleaning day. Ok, enviromentalists, I'm ready for the organic tomatoes!
We don't have it here. I do compost and recycle certain things. I am amazed with how much that has cut our trash down. And I would recycle more if there was free road-side pick up. As it is, when things get full and my husband hasn't made the trip for a while, I start putting stuff in the trash
It's not mandatory here, but we do have curbside recycling. Although that has only been the last year, before that there were a couple locations around town you could take things to. We recycled some then, but it is so much nicer to just have a bin at home and not have to hual it somewhere. Curbside service is picked up every other week and costs an extra $5 a month above what you have to pay for garbage service ( I believe that is $14 amonth), so I can see why not everyone chooses to do it. We average 2 to 3 kitchen sized garbage bags in the garbage bin weekly.
We can't afford not to recycle. We have to take our trash to the dump because the pick up service here is waaaaay to expensive. We don't have to pay to dump our recycling stuff as long as we take trash to the dump, too. We have about 2-3 kitchen size bags a week.
We have large trash and recycling bins...... however when we moved here all kids were using eiter pullups or diapers so they gave a second trash bin on request (free then, now we pay $11 for the extra bin). Trash pick up is once a week. our recycling bin is full every week. we put all recycling in that bin and its dumped like garbage but recycled at the plant.
Ours are similar to Amy's. We have two large cans-one for recyclables and one for trash. Both are picked up every week but on different days. I think I have a kitchen-sized bag of trash every day or two, but also lots of recyclables. Our city is in the beginning stages of adding a compost can, too. I'm not sure when it will be added. Our pick-up is not free. It's $18 a month.
We had curbside recycling in Iowa and really liked it. We recycled everything we could then. We had at least one biggish garbage can full each week, but we were also still using diapers. Here in Michigan, if we want to recycle, we have to take it to the city transfer station and sort it into the appropriate bins. So, we don't recycle glass, plastic, or metal. We take paper to the paper retrievers they have everywhere and we do compost. We are allowed one large trash bin per week. Usually we have only 2 kitchen bags in it.
There's no way I would pay for curbside recycling IN ADDITION TO what we have to pay for our normal trash pick-up. We have it here; I don't do it because I don't think it's right to make us pay additional for it. If I couldn't take it to a bin myself, we wouldn't recycle.
We recently moved. Both places had paid trash pick up. The old one didn't offer recycling. The new one does it on a voluntary basis only. We have an enormous trash can provided to us through the trash company. It's usually half full each week, and the recycling box is usually overflowing (the size of a super-sized laundry basket). Our trash company is very particular about what types of materials it'll accept in the recycle bin, so a lot of our stuff goes in the trash.
We have a mandatory pick up in our city. It costs us $48.60 every other month. Trash barrels are provided and each holds up to 332.5 lbs of trash. I feel like a wasteful person compared to some of you because we take out our trash daily and place both barrels on the side of the street every week. Granted, the trash doesn't weigh the allotted amount. We also have two green waste barrels for anything that can be composted. We have a nice compost bin but it is usually full so the green waste barrels come in handy. Anything from plants, wood, to newspapers can be tossed in the green waste. We also have blue waste, which is for bottles or other plastics. We do not use these because we take our recyclables in for cash. We can request more barrels at no extra charge except the blue waste. I believe there is an extra fee.
I forgot, the fee also covers large item pick ups, three times a month. We rarely use it though. But it did come in handy once when we had a couch to be picked up.
I had the recycling bins when we lived in CA and I loved being able to seperate my trash that way. Now I am in an apartment and can't. There is no place nearby to take it and I don't have the room to store it. I wish they could put recycle bins next to the regular trash in our complex, but I'm sure plenty of people would dump just anything into it and ruin it.
We don't have it here either, unless you want to show up at the town office between certain hours on one day a week. I used to try to recycle.. but honestly I fight clutter, and it was more more more. Constantly knocked over or spilled and I got tired of picking it up day after day. We do reuse everything we can, so that's a form of 'recycling' I think. I won't embaress myself by telling you how much trash we have It depends on the week though. Sometimes very little, other times...
Jackie, we don't have a choice in whether we pay an additional fee for recycling. We contract with the city approved trash hauler and pay by the amount of trash we want to put out each week AND we get a charge on our water bill for recycling. You cannot opt out of recycling and you pay the fee whether or not you actually recycle.
So in a sense recycling is mandatory, or at least you're charged for it whether you do it or not. Here there's one private company that does it for the whole city, but you have to contract for them to do it. Then the city takes out for regular trash pick-up, not sure how they bill us for that, or if it's just comes out of our (too high) taxes. AH! Carl says it comes out of city tax. Anyway, when we were first married, we lived in a township that had a company do it. I was seperating for recycling, and taking it somewhere on my own. Then I get a notice in the mail from the company about this new state-of-the-art facility. They actually would take your trash and seperate it out there at their site! So I could dump everything in together, and they would dig out what needed recycled! I actually called them up to check on this, to make sure I understood them correctly.
Our city will not allow our apartment to have a recycling container because they say "we don't have enough space for it" so we do not recycle, because I am not going to collect the recycling and drive 45 minutes to the nearest drop off center. We put out a bag of trash every other day usually, and one extra bag when we do our weekly trash collection from the small bins in the bathrooms, and other odd trash. I do try to reuse as much of our trash as I can, like cereal boxes, plastic shopping bags, empty bottles, soup cans, toilet paper tubes, bottle tops, etc.
We have mandatory recycling but they charge us $6 a month for it. Other than that we pay $27 a month for our garbage pickup. We get a large 96 gallon trash can that we can fill up, but we are charged extra if our lid doesn't shut all the way. The city we lived in before the one we are in now actually had "trash police" that would go through trash bins that were on the curb for pick up and if they felt that more than 10% of your trash could be recycled you were fined $100. We thought that was absolutely insane because you can't argue whatever their decision was.
