Reading Laurel’s blog post, which mainly concentrated on poor recycling practices in the U.S. was both eye opening, and made me extremely frustrated. How could a university, or city (via mandates) not ensure sports facilities have nearby recycling bins?
Sure, it would be ideal to have everyone use a re-usable bottle. However, we do not live in an ideal world. The majority of athlete’s still use plastic bottles, but at least have the resources to recycle. One question is, why do these athletes use plastic bottles? Perhaps its because while watching professional sports games (especially soccer), almost every team uses plastic bottles. Likely, there are nearby recycling bins to dispose these bottles, however, is that really enough? These teams have the potential to truly make a difference, and be the driving force behind change. If one major team started using re-usable bottles, would there be a domino effect? I believe so.
This leads me to my next point, government intervention. Why is there no mandate for sporting facilities to have recycling bins within a, say 200-meter radius of each facility? Secondly, when will they fully ban plastic bottles? My belief is that the first part of the question would be easier to enforce. It truly doesn’t make sense to me how these facilities could not have recycling bins nearby. How many plastic bottles per day/year are going to landfills because of politician’s lackadaisical behaviour? As for the second part, re-usable bottles save consumers money, are better for the environment, and are healthier (plastics = bad). Do governments care solely about tax earning from bottle sales? Likely, yes. However, I think now is the time for change. Filtration systems are widely available, so a plastic bottle ban likely wouldn’t be too hard to implement. From my point of view, this change only benefits the general public. What do you think?
The last point I wanted to touch on was the $0.05 recycling fee. Do stores charging this fee truly create an incentive for consumers to recycle their beverages? I think it can go either way. My feeling is that cities currently charging a recycling fee are more focused on being green, and thus, would have more “Return-It Depot’s”, or other recycling resources available. However, as Laurel mentioned, a place like Austin Texas, who offers few to zero recycling bins, doesn’t charge a recycling fee. Likely, the reasoning is the population’s inadequate knowledge about the benefits of recycling. Thus, even with more bins, or a fee, I truly believe that without a major social recycling program, behavioural change would not occur.
Blog Post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/laureljay/