Why don't my wealthy friends recycle?

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

He is an example. You put out a bin and the truck decides you didn’t sort it enough or you put some plastic with the cardboard and they also that orange sticker on the bin that won’t come off. And the stuff in the bin all had recycle symbols.

Guess what, I’m done. It’s going in the trash. If the county wants to make more work for me, then it’s all going out on Friday in the trash.

You know what is an amazing recycle bin? That big green dumpster.

If moco wants more recycling then take whatever is put out and sort it at the transfer station.

[Anonymous]

The most striking thing about the OP was that in 2013 a HHI of $260,000 was considered UMC, whereas people now cry poverty at the same income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He is an example. You put out a bin and the truck decides you didn’t sort it enough or you put some plastic with the cardboard and they also that orange sticker on the bin that won’t come off. And the stuff in the bin all had recycle symbols.

Guess what, I’m done. It’s going in the trash. If the county wants to make more work for me, then it’s all going out on Friday in the trash.

You know what is an amazing recycle bin? That big green dumpster.

If moco wants more recycling then take whatever is put out and sort it at the transfer station.

They look in your bins?? That’s crazy but I used to live in Moco so I’m not surprised

[Anonymous]

Most of them probably have someone else, like a nanny or housekeeper helping out and potentially putting things in the wrong bin as well. When you have a lot of people at your house mixing things up, eventually it becomes futile I imagine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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

Typical elitist mentality, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Gavin N and Nancy P come to mind during lockdown mandates.

[Anonymous]

They don’t gives a shit….

[Anonymous]

I know it doesn’t actually get recycled so I stopped trying.

[Anonymous]

In 2019, China abruptly stopped accepting most American recyclables.

But it's 2023. Surely we found new takers and it's not all a hoax, as if our recycling goes right to our local dump.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know it doesn’t actually get recycled so I stopped trying.

Yeah. I half a$$ it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In 2019, China abruptly stopped accepting most American recyclables.

But it's 2023. Surely we found new takers and it's not all a hoax, as if our recycling goes right to our local dump.

Wasn’t our garbage getting loaded up on the big Chinese barges going back to China? That has stopped? I figured China was just dumping the crap in whatever water where no one reported them.

[Anonymous]

Maybe they are lazy, maybe they don’t care, maybe they know as any reasonably informed person does that the VAST majority of plastic isn’t getting recycled it’s buried or burned.

I put most of the plastic stuff in the recycle bin because we pay per bag of trash but there is no charge to fill the recycle bin (red flag) so it’s a savings to ‘recycle.’ I will not waste water cleaning plastic containers as the guidelines require because I know they are getting buried or burned so it would be worse ecologically to waste the water, I think.

The recycling system was built on a trinity of REDUCE, REUSE, recycle. Most of America is stuck on the recycle and pats themselves on the back that they’ve been good doobies because they put all that plastic they buy into a bin so it could go away and not be their problem anymore. What they need to do is stop buying it, but in fairness it is nearly impossible to avoid plastic in the purchasing of food in America today. We need to demand that corporations change modalities but there isn’t any pressure to do that because we have our endless bins of recycling out at the curb whisking our plastic crap to a magical fairy place where it becomes something else without polluting our environment. Ha.

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-is-practically-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse

[Anonymous]

Here’s another piece which lays out very clearly how we all got massively duped by Big Oil on the issue of plastics, which are now polluting our planet everywhere and can be found in most animals and people too.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

I think most people mean well but our planet has been raped and pillaged by the few who do not with the full participation of all the well meaning people who just didn’t know better and now that the truth is out there, they are choosing to ignore it and keep living their convenience plastic lifestyles and burying their heads in the sand about the planet they are leaving to their poor kids and grands.