Eco audit: recycling glass and cans

Back in my teens, my main area of environmental activity was probably pestering my parents to take bottles and cans to the recycling bank.  It was in walking distance! It was important! And so on.

I’m sure my teenage self would be surprised at how much glass and can recycling has become mainstream.  It’s one area in which I think the UK has ‘gone with the programme’.

But the main surprise is not that there are recycling facilities, or that people use them, but that local councils will come to your door to collect recycling materials.

I live in a city which gets better and better at this every year.  But even a few years ago, it was still the case that, if you wanted to recycle things, you needed to take them to a recycling centre – or to a local supermarket which had those can and bottle banks.

And the main factors there are a) distance and b) having a car.  For a number of reasons (which will probably work their way into becoming a post at some point), we didn’t own a car until fairly recently.

Immediate environmental conundrum: do you drive but recycle, or do you not drive (‘keep cars off the roads!’)- and end up with recycling that you can’t shift?

Even if you are cooking for two, even if you are making a fair amount of your own food, you will get through bottles and cans.  It’s hard not to.  Even if you grow your own, you still need to find ways to preserve your food after a while – which often means jars.

At university, I remember asking my parents if they would help me take the bottles to the recycling.  In my first year, living in a flat for six people (and with two out of six on a course which offset very hard studying with very hard partying), that added up to a lot of bottles.

Later on, in another flat, there were facilities we could walk to – which was a help.  But I know that, by the time we were in our second flat after being married, the recycling facilities for the closest supermarket were at the top of a steep hill.

Yes, you could fill your rucksack with bottles, lug them up the hill, empty them, do your shopping, and walk home with the bag full of food.  But it was harder work.

I think we asked a few favours for getting the bottles to the recycling bank every now and then – and I suspect more cans went in the bin than should have done.

But coming to your door – fantastic.  No problem if you don’t have a car, or if you can’t carry the weight of the bottles far.

New conundrum: where do you keep your recycling while it’s building up? Do you nip out to an outside store with every can or bottle as it becomes available, or do you keep them inside?

As it happens, I think we’re in a good place with this bit.  It’s easier at home – harder in work environments, where recycling facilities aren’t always so good.  Where it’s easy to put a can from your lunch in the bin, and no one bats an eyelid.

You can of course take yours home.  Petition for recycling bins.  Perhaps rescue items from out of bins, if you’re feeling brave, and there’s a sink nearby.  That’s where nudging, rather than lecturing people, helps.

The thing that struck me once, heaving bottles into the bottle bank, was why we break the bottles as we recycle them? Why not return them to supermarkets, as happens in Germany? Why not bring back that notion of getting a little money back on a bottle by returning it to where you bought it?

Answer? Back to transport, space, ease of carrying and so on.  If your house has space for crates of bottles, and you have a car, and   you even have space in your boot, then it works.

Even for an area like this which has become mainstream, it’s not all sorted.  And it can get equally confusing when you go on holiday, even just to another part of the UK, or a couple of hours up the road, and discover that you have to arrange things differently for recycling.

But…it’s going in the right direction, I think.  But I’d still like to know what to do with used lightbulbs for the weekly recycling pick up.  And broken glass, which recycling people understandably don’t want to pick up.  Any suggestions?