Almost half of the household waste in the HSY area is not recycled. HS readers tell why they don’t recycle.
Bio waste is disgusting and recycling waste is too difficult. Such reasons are repeated in HS’s survey, where people tell why they don’t recycle.
In the Helsinki region, only 47 percent of household waste ends up being recycled. In addition, the recycling rate throughout Finland has decreased in recent years.
“There they are, who sort everything and those who don’t sort anything”, describes the environmental expert of the Helsinki region’s environmental services (HSY) Iris Tanner.
The answers to the survey show that recycling is associated with a lot of negative emotions.
40 percent of the mixed waste in HSY’s area was bio-waste in 2021. Many of the survey respondents state that they recycle all other waste generated at home, except bio-waste.
Bio waste handling is not fun, because it is unpleasant to handle. Single-person households usually accumulate little organic waste, and it is frustrating to carry half-empty bags to the garbage can.
HSY’s Tanner thinks that half a bag is important.
“It is easy to collect a small amount of organic waste in paper flour or candy bags and it can be conveniently transported to the waste container,” he advises.
The smell of biowaste. Oh god! I don’t really collect. I don’t even put banana and watermelon peels in a container with a lid and end up going out to the garbage and pouring a nauseating smelling pile into the garbage. And you should get rid of spilled liquids or clean the container, hii!
Bio-waste collection started in Espoo on July 1. Already after the first week, the dish was swarming with larvae and soon after flies. Since then, I haven’t looked at the whole container, but put my organic waste in the mixed waste!
As a root cause it seems to be that recycling is not perceived as meaningful enough.
The phenomenon worries HSY’s Tanner.
When it comes to recycling, it’s not just about the amount of accumulated waste, but about how much new raw materials have to be taken from nature.
“If everyone thinks that their little waste means nothing, a big pot of materials will remain unrecycled. Then we have to use a lot of new raw materials from nature,” says Tanner.
Many respondents, especially those living in small houses, found recycling to be too laborious.
We live in a detached house. Storing and transporting waste to recycling points is too cumbersome. We put organic waste in mixed waste, because buying a separate container and paying for emptying it is not exciting.
Unexpected setbacks also ate away at the motivation of otherwise enthusiastic recyclers.
“Paper should be shoved through an opening the size of a mailbox into the suction pipe. I don’t want to spend my time on this, but I throw my waste paper in the mixed waste. It seems absurd to shove paper waste through a small opening in a minute.
One resident said that he tried to conscientiously recycle for a year in his new home, but that he finally gave up when he noticed that the other residents did not do the same. This is how he described his situation:
In the current housing association, many do not recycle. The bio container is full of plastic waste. Mixed waste bags are thrown into the container that happens to be closest or has room.
Many people living in places other than apartment buildings complained about both the trouble caused by sorting and the additional costs caused by it. Several respondents insisted that recycling should be rewarded rather than punished.
In a single-family house, sorting at home costs a lot more than just the risk of mixed waste.
In a small house, it is absolutely absurd to pay for the collection of each verse separately.
Perhaps even the most common reason for not sorting waste in the survey was that kitchens in the capital region are small. It is not easy to find space for all seven common types of waste. Common types of recyclable waste are mixed, energy and bio waste as well as metal, glass, paper and cardboard.
There is no room in an apartment building for all possible recycling containers, unless you want them to be the dominant decoration element of your home. There is simply no reasonable space for bio-waste or plastic collection containers.
HSY’s Tanner according to you, a small space can hold a surprising amount of waste if you take an interest in exploring your own closets.
“Waste does not have to be located in the kitchen. You can think about whether there could be space in the cleaning closet for cardboard or recycling paper, for example,” suggests Tanner.
People living in apartment buildings also said that there were not all the required recycling containers at all, which made it very difficult to recycle glass, for example.
When the glass ends up being incinerated among the mixed waste, it can hardly be used anymore.
“If the glass was sorted into its own verse, it could circulate practically forever. It will be possible to make a product of the same level from recycled glass in the future,” says Tanner from HSY.
Recycling may seem like a big and difficult whole, but according to Tanner, it can be started with small steps.
The most important thing of all would be to start separating bio-waste from other mixed waste.
“You can start with banana peels and coffee grounds, for example. Later, you can see if you can sort out anything else,” advises Tanner.
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