Free to dispose of if sorted, paid if not: Norway’s recycling model
cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/[email protected]/p/2204459/free-to-dispose-of-if-sorted-paid-if-not-norways-recycling-model
I visited a landfill in Norway today. Almost everything is sorted, and properly sorted waste can be disposed of free of charge. Unsorted residual waste costs money to throw away.
I think it’s an effective incentive system. Does your country or municipality do something similar?
5 replies
Around me, there is a landfill where we sort manually (which is good) but you can only go 24 times a year. It's unfair because every time I go, my small car is equal to the big trucks that can bring 10 times more stuff than me. Also because of that limit, there are "natural landfills" that "sprout" in random places.
So, 24 times whether you use a truck or a small car. Dumbest idea ever.
Edit: I forgot that the landfill is restricted to people living there (controlled by a shitty smartphone application) which means that tourists will throw their stuff in the wild instead.
Sounds like Belgium.
I lived there some years ago, and they have a limit like that (not sure how many times a year) but most annoyingly, a 1m³ limit per trip. I used to sort my trash in 8 large bins, and would only go to the recycler when a good number of them were full: the idiots would turn me away each and every time, despite my single "big load" trip being more efficient than multiple small ones. And they were exceedingly aggressive too 🙁
And yeah, same results: people would dump their shit on the road out of the recycling center...
Title applies in Taipei, Taiwan.
Funny details: Mixed waste requires prepaid bags with an official stamp. In many buildings, there are no big bins (because they'd stink and feed rats and cockroaches), but instead you listen to a jingle that garbage trucks play (or just follow their schedule), and you race your sorted wastes there. It's a weekly neighbourhood meeting. Biobags are unnecessary because the workers on the truck empty your various plastic pouches into the appropriate bins. Food waste is processed into pig fodder.
https://communitycenter.org.tw/guide-to-garbage-collection-and-recycling-in-taipei/
Interesting 🤓 ... pigs should be used more, but I think that is banned in Europe. Food here goes to making biogass for busses and trucks, or just composted.
It's the same in most European countries I've lived in.
Funnily enough, where I live now, I DON'T sort my trash and here's why: if I sort my trash, I have to drive to the recycling center 15 km away every two or three weeks with bins full of sorted stuff (luckily I have a large minivan). But there are three problems with that:
So instead, I have a large covered dumpster permanently on the property. I dump my non-bio trash there any which way. And every two or three years, I call the dumpster truck to pick up the dumpster, empty it at the recycler where someone sorts everything, and bring it back.
The last load cost me 550€. It's more than if I sorted and drove the trash myself, but it's not that much more. And more importantly, I don't sort and drive the trash myself, and that's worth the difference 🙂 Also, someone has a job doing this for me.