Let's talk rubbish!
Having just returned to Switzerland from our summer vacation in the USA, I am relieved to be sorting my trash again. I know this sounds strange. It just feels good to know that I am doing my part in a system that actually works.
Look at the numbers: The US recycles 32.5% of its waste, compared to 60% in Austria (the highest score in the EU), and 10% in Greece. Switzerland comes out ahead with 54% of waste recycled (75% for glass, PET and aluminum beverage containers).
The three reasons I believe that Americans don’t recycle properly is threefold: a lack of incentive to recycle, distrust in recycling systems, and inconvenience.
Lack of incentive
Switzerland creates an incentive to recycle by taxing garbage bags. In my village, a roll of ten 35-liter trash bags costs about $19. That means that each bag costs nearly $2!
Conversely, recycling is free.
What happens if you use a non-taxed bag? Well, the garbage police regularly searches non-taxed trash bags that have been dumped in communal dumpsters illegally, looking for clues of the culprits’ identities, such as an address on an envelope. If you are caught, fines can amount to $10,000!
Distrust
Where my mother lives in Newport, Rhode Island, recycling does happen, but people don't trust it. I remember when the program began--sometime in the early 90's--there were eyewitness accounts of recycling trucks dumping their contents into the normal garbage that was slated for the landfill.
Recycling in Newport is only offered to residences. Businesses, i.e. bars and restaurants, are not required to recycle, and hence, most do not. And if you consider that Newport has one of the highest number of bars per capita in the US, you can just begin to imagine how many empty beer bottles and cans are generated on any given weekend.
In Switzerland, everyone recycles. It doesn't matter whether you are a business or a private person. Just one trip to a super efficient Swiss recycling center is enough to convince one of the seriousness of their system.
Inconvenience
Let's start with batteries.
During our vacation in Newport this summer, I asked my mother where I could dispose of used batteries. She replied that once a year, during a special toxic material disposal day, one can bring used batteries to the dump. That's crazy! I am not going to keep used and leaking batteries in my house for an entire year! I suspect most people don't save their old batteries and simply dispose of them in the regular trash, which IS HORRIBLE! In my village here in Switzerland, recycling is convenient. Every major grocery store makes a battery recycling bin available to its customers.
Even though there is no recycling pick-up, there are plenty of places to bring recycling: the municipal recycling center, my neighborhood recycling spot, or closest grocery store, which are all open and available every weekday and Saturdays. Each grocery store has bins for recycling batteries, plastic PET bottles and milk bottles, as well as whipped cream dispensers. Every neighborhood recycling spot has bins for disposing glass, metal, and plastic PET bottles. Our neighborhood even has a bin for disposing Nespresso capsules!
Plus, you pay a tax to get rid of that television set when you buy it, so every electronics store and the recycling center will take your broken old TV for free.
You can say that the Swiss are too strict in regards to rubbish. But I think that they are acting responsibly, in light of the fact that they have limited space and seem to care about not contaminating their ground water supply. Interestingly, they banned the direct disposal of combustible waste in landfills 10 years ago. Now, all municipal waste is incinerated, and landfills are solely used for the disposal of non-burnable waste.