Convenience
Today I believe I found an area that needs to be acknowledged more heavily. A gap in the circle of American consumer-centric life that I can fill. Recycling is becoming more popular as the years go on, but it still has many hurdles to overcome before we arrive at efficiency. This summer I have become acutely aware of the massive amounts of waste that are still being sent to landfills when such items could be recycled instead.
My perspective comes from working across many different industries, the two most recent being construction, and hospitality. There are of course, many differences between the two, but the fact that struck me, was the amount of waste still being senselessly generated by both. The problem lies within the choices provided to the individual working on site. There is gap between placing a large recycling container in the back of a building, and getting people to efficiently sort their waste so that it arrives at that bin.
It MUST be more convenient to recycle something than throw it in the trash, or it won’t happen 99.9% of the time. If there is a trash can next to you, or a recycling bin 100 feet away, which are you more likely to choose? I can personally say, I throw paper, plastic, and compostable waste in the landfill trash can at work for one reason. It is the only convenient option for me to choose within the work space. I don’t have time to leave my post and seek out the greenest method of waste disposal.
My goal is to make this problem obsolete. When throwing something away at work, home, or in public I want it to be more convenient to recycle. People will always choose the most convenient option put in front of them. If that’s to buy a plastic bottle of water for $2 they will. If it means throwing the empty bottle in the trash, or to be recycled, they will always choose trash unless drastic changes are made to how we sort our waste. This isn’t one person or companies problem.
This problem belongs to all of us, and we need to find a way to make recycling our waste the most convenient option. I understand it is not the cheapest, and money is always a peak motivator in business. I have worked for more than one employer that did not have any recycling available because it was “too expensive to recycle”. Thoughts like this need to change. I need to be the voice of that change.
One thought on “Convenience”
Yes this. We are often guilty of thinking of the short-term costs (“It’s too expensive to recycle”) vs the long term costs (major climate problems and overflowing landfills). I will digress to say that a landfill is basically the same thing as digging a hole in your front yard and putting your waste in it, a thought that changed how I thought of trash collection. Rob Bell once wrote something along the lines of “Have you ever thought about your trash after it gets collected? Do you wonder if it made it there safely? Do you wonder where “there” is?” I think about this often and sometimes it’s the boost I need to make it to the less convenient option. We have to encourage each other in these kinds of thinking, because it’s hard when it feels like you’re swimming upstream.