Why don't my wealthy friends recycle?
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Anonymous
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I really don't understand this. We're rather upper middle class with a $260,000 HHI. We have hardly any trash at all. Certainly never more than one bin a week, if that. We recycle all our bottle, plastic, aluminum, paper etc. We reuse as much as we can. I've noticed over the 15 years that I've lived in MoCo that most of my wealthiest friends (CFO's, VP's of this or that company) don't even bother to try to recycle. It all goes in the trash. Some of these families have 4 garbage cans full of trash 2x/week! I used to try to encourage them and even offered to help set up some systems for them but they just can't wrap their minds around it. It really isn't that complicated for God's sake! These are smart, well-educated, thoughtful, compassionate people for the most part. I consider them my friends but we definitely don't agree on reducing our collective impact.
So if you feel that you fall into this category please explain to me what the barriers are that keep you from recycling. Thanks |
Anonymous
| Because if they're smart enough to be in such high professional positions, they're smart enough to realize recycling is pretty much a crock. Most of the stuff gets tossed into landfills anyway. The world is better off with them making oodles of taxable income with their time than separating trash that will all go to the same place. |
Anonymous
| I see the recycling bin right next to the trash can at the ofice or at metro, and all it takes is to DROP the recyclable trash into the recycle bin, but often I see aluminum cans, plastic bottles, newspapers (in metro), in the TRASH. |
Anonymous
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I don't know if everything I recycle actually gets recycled, but we think it's important and try our best. I wish we could recycle more items, especially various plastics.
Oh wait, we're not wealthy... oh well! |
Anonymous
| So maybe I should stop recycling and then I'll become wealthy. |
Anonymous
Oh please.  So these captains of industry, their time is too valuable to be wasted on recycling. And how do you know it's all a crock? Even if the system is imperfect, why not give it your best shot? It only takes a few minutes to recycle. That's the time equivalent of maybe 3-4 DCUM posts.
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Anonymous
Oh I see. It takes a lot of time for these rich, smart people to figure out what should go be recycled vs trashed. They could be making oodles of money during the time they are tossing a bottle into the recycling bin. 
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Anonymous
You missed the point. I think you were distracted by the .
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Anonymous
| because it's stupid |
Anonymous
| Because they are former poors or middle class and are now new money? |
Anonymous
No it's stupid and the wealthy don't take out their own trash so this argument is... stupid |
Anonymous
That is not true. You have shown that the only one who is stupid is..... |
Anonymous
How much time is consumed in dropping your bottles in the can to the right vs. the can to the left? If that vexes them, they are not captains of anything. |
Anonymous
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Wealthy people who don't recycle probably are lazy and didn't do it when they were kids. Same as the poor people who don't recycle.
Their laziness is greater than the amount of good they think would come from recycling. |
Anonymous
| Laziness and selfishness. |