Recycling: How Public Policy can change Private Behaviour | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Forced recycling in South Oxfordshire

I am a bit of a fan of Flylady, the somewhat annoying American Domestic Organization goddess. She suggests that one should not get caught up in guilt about recycling until one has one’s act together, domestically, and is running a smooth and efficient household.

And so I did not. I was an extremely sporadic recycler.

In my travels around Europe however, I was impressed by how European local governments used carrots and sticks to get people to recycle.

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In Switzerland, for instance, household waste can only be discarded in small black plastic bags, which can only be bought from the council, for 8 francs, I seem to remember. Dropping stuff off in the recycling was free. Guess what? Precious little household waste went to landfill.

Supermarkets had machines at which one could return cans and bottles and get one’s deposit. Everyone seemed to be doing this, the well-dressed and posh, and the scruffier.

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Last year, my county, South Oxfordshire, decided it did not want to be fined for over-use of landfill.

So it limited us to ONE wheelie bin of rubbish a fortnight, and one wheelie bin of recycling a fortnight.

However, they would clear as much recycling as you put out. If you put out more trash than would fit in your bin, they would refuse to clear it, as we learnt by experience. And you would need to drive to the tip, or somehow generate a lot less rubbish in the next fortnight.

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In the days when the bin men collected as much as you put out, our family generated four or more bags of rubbish a week, don’t ask how.

Now, it’s become a bit of a challenge to try to fit two weeks worth of rubbish into one bin.

We’ve started recycling regularly, for the first time, but are probably still scratching the surface of what can be recycled–70 percent of household waste, some say.

We’ve started composting, and I, in particular, am fascinated by this garden magic, turning food scraps, garden clippings, and cardboards into black, rich crumbly earth.

We used to have ducks and chicken, but after one was eaten; one terrified to death after being grabbed; and one mauled horrifically by a fox, we took a break from poultry keeping. We are now going to try again, with a larger movable arc and more vigilance. I like the idea of a domestic eco-system–food scraps given to the ducks, eggs produced for humans, duck waste and egg shells to the compost for further human and duck food.

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South Oxfordshire has certainly stumbled upon a very effective way of changing people’s behaviour by limiting the amount of rubbish–but not the amount of recycling they’ll clear. It’s forced us to learn to slow down, and learn what’s recyclable and what isn’t, and then to actually do it.