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On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." It's amazing how

On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." It's amazing how much that little switch makes you think carefully about everything you're throwing away. If you can get people to truly understand the consequences of what they're doing, the majority of them will change their ways.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
Have they also put alongside them recycling cans? Changed their suppliers to ones that use reuse, recycle and manufacture with recyclable materials?
anamax 17y ago
> On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." It's amazing how much that little switch makes you think carefully about everything you're throwing away. And what do people do differently? BTW - the above seems to assume that the US has a landfill shortage. It does, but only by choice. The US tries to recycle some things that don't make economic sense to recycle today. It would be better to simply collect and store these things until it does make sense to reclaim them. Landfills are ideally suited to this purpose. Yes, it's dumb to recycle when it doesn't make economic sense. Subsidies are waste. You'd think that folks who claim to care about waste would understand that and actually walk their talk. What am I thinking? People do things because of how it makes them feel.
- fuzzmeister 17y ago
  This change was accompanied by a switch to single-stream recycling - that is, all recyclable materials can be deposited in one bin and sorted later. From what I've seen, this change has significantly increased recycling. Could you give some examples of goods that don't make sense to recycle currently? I certainly believe that could be true, I just haven't read anything solid about it.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > This change was accompanied by a switch to single-stream recycling - that is, all recyclable materials can be deposited in one bin and sorted later. From what I've seen, this change has significantly increased recycling. If the two changes (signage and single bin) happened at the same time, why the claim that signage was significant (and the omission of the single bin omission)? > Could you give some examples of goods that don't make sense to recycle currently? Sorry - I stopped tracking these things when I figured out that folks didn't care about the economics. I'm reasonably sure that they still exist because people are still people.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago

Have they also put alongside them recycling cans? Changed their suppliers to ones that use reuse, recycle and manufacture with recyclable materials?

anamax 17y ago

> On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." It's amazing how much that little switch makes you think carefully about everything you're throwing away. And what do people do differently? BTW - the above seems to assume that the US has a landfill shortage. It does, but only by choice. The US tries to recycle some things that don't make economic sense to recycle today. It would be better to simply collect and store these things until it does make sense to reclaim them. Landfills are ideally suited to this purpose. Yes, it's dumb to recycle when it doesn't make economic sense. Subsidies are waste. You'd think that folks who claim to care about waste would understand that and actually walk their talk. What am I thinking? People do things because of how it makes them feel.

fuzzmeister 17y ago
This change was accompanied by a switch to single-stream recycling - that is, all recyclable materials can be deposited in one bin and sorted later. From what I've seen, this change has significantly increased recycling. Could you give some examples of goods that don't make sense to recycle currently? I certainly believe that could be true, I just haven't read anything solid about it.
- anamax 17y ago
  > This change was accompanied by a switch to single-stream recycling - that is, all recyclable materials can be deposited in one bin and sorted later. From what I've seen, this change has significantly increased recycling. If the two changes (signage and single bin) happened at the same time, why the claim that signage was significant (and the omission of the single bin omission)? > Could you give some examples of goods that don't make sense to recycle currently? Sorry - I stopped tracking these things when I figured out that folks didn't care about the economics. I'm reasonably sure that they still exist because people are still people.