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Veronica McCabe Deschambault, V-Grrrl in the Middle, Compost StudiosTM

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Thursday
May112006

Caught between a dump and a green place

Confession: when we lived in the U.S., I was not much of a recycler. Sure I supported recycling in theory, but the U.S. doesn’t make recycling easy. In my community, trash was picked up from our driveway twice a week, but there wasn’t any home pickup of recyclables. If you chose to recycle, you had to drive your stuff to the community landfill which was 10 miles away.

Once at the landfill, you couldn’t park your car in one spot and unload all your recyclables into the appropriate bins. No, the paper bins were at one end of the parking lot, the colored glass and clear glass bins were somewhere else, plastics had their own area, the cans were across the way, and none of this was marked by visible signs. Because it was such a hassle and not close by, we’d procrastinate on dealing with our recyclables until the garage looked like a dump. Then in a fit of frustration, I’d often end up bagging everything up and dragging it to the curb on trash day just to get it out of my house.

Recycling wasn’t mandatory where I lived, and because I’d worked in the environmental consulting business early in my career, I knew that just because you put something in a recycling bin in the U.S., that didn’t guarantee it would be recycled.

Whether items got recycled or not was all market-driven. In true capitalistic fashion, it’s all about money and supply and demand. If businesses aren’t using recycled paper in their offices or processes, then the financial incentive to turn discarded newspapers into new products isn’t there. Or if the supply of discarded paper outstripped the demand for the recycled product, the paper left for recycling was sent to the landfill and buried like all other trash. The same dynamics ruled the plastics, glass, and metals programs.

Because the U.S. government refused to step in and require recycling and the use of recycled products, there wasn’t a strong incentive for consumers and businesses to jump in and do the right thing. Let’s face it, when money talks, green intentions can get tossed.

That’s why I’ve been impressed with Belgium’s recycling program—it’s government-driven and harnesses financial incentives to push people to be “green.” Recycling is mandatory in my commune, and pickups for different sorts of waste are done according to a calendar. Everything brought to the “container park” (landfill) or picked up at the curb must be sorted and placed into color-coded bags which are sold by the commune. It’s a subtle way of making you pay for all the waste you generate and the cost of disposing of it.

The bags are expensive by U.S. standards, they cost well over a $1 each. The brown ones for general waste (meaning garbage) are the most expensive. Their cost gives you a direct financial incentive not to fill them with aluminum cans, glass jars and bottles, paper, or plastics. No, those go in the less expensive recycling bags, each one color-coded for a particular category. While the bags are colored, they’re also sheer, so don’t even TRY to put items into recycling bags that don’t belong in them to save a few pennies.

Do that and the sharp-eyed waste handlers will give you a “spanking” by slapping a big red hand sticker on the outside of the offending bag and leaving it at the curb for all your neighbors to see. Ah public humiliation! It’s a great excuse for people to discuss whether you’re intellectually challenged and can’t properly sort recyclables or morally decrepit and trying to circumvent the system.

We’ve been caught red-handed twice and had to talk trash with our neighbors to figure out what we had done wrong.

Getting slapped with the red hand makes me want to shout, “We’re not morons or cheats—we’re American expats!”

I’ll leave it to others to debate whether it’s better to be in the former category rather than the latter. The truth of the matter is that we’re just green at being green.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

May 11, 2006

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Reader Comments (6)

In Durham, we had curb-side recycling. It was so easy that you'd be foolish not to do it. I also think there is a law on the NC books that makes it illegal to throw away aluminum cans... but I know for a fact our waste managment folks didn't comb through my sacks, so who knew if a can or two made it to the regular trash. Now I live in a place that doesn't have trash pick-up paid for by our taxes. You hire your own company and pay quarterly. Recycling is another charge. So, we've swapped places... you go from being non-green to green and we've gone the opposite way.
May 11, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterShirl Grrrl
Belgium's recycling program is something I'd be totally supportive of. I'm a big recycler and it always kind of surprises me when people say they don't recycle. It takes so little effort on my part to group my stuff into organic waste, paper and plastic. It's just how I feel I can do my part, you know?
May 11, 2006 | Unregistered Commentermama_tulip
Wow. I am impressed. I thought recycyling was mandatory at least in California??

Great idea to make the general waste bags the most expensive.
May 11, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterDebbie
Wow that is a lot of pressure and a huge lifestyle change on top of everything else you guys are dealing with. But it sounds like a worthy thing to get good at. Go easy on yourselves though. That one is going to take time to adjust to.
May 11, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterTB
In my former town in Massachusetts it was also manditory to recycle. of course this was only after years of the landfill being so bad that you couldnt go to that side of town without holding your breath. we had comune distributed trash bags that cost an arm and a leg and also a manditory hard plastic container with the town emblem on it bought at the town hall. i liked the plastic container system better than the plastic bag system here in belgium. i've heard from belgians that they don't even recycle those bags! at least with our container it had our address on it so there was no stealing and everyone had to have one so there was no point in stealing! and it was REUSABLE. the whole point in recycling.
May 12, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterAmanda
Belgium is certainly doing its part. Unfortunately, Greece lacks in recycling facilities and most importantly in recycling mentality. We still have a long ways to go. If recycling isn't government-driven it is very difficult to enforce recycling and recycled goods. A couple of years back my family and I visited Vienna where we were informed that the non-recyclable waste was sent to an energy facility and was used to heat the city. I was very impressed and very jealous of our fellow Europeans' initiative.
May 14, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterFlubberwinkle

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