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Recycling Around the World

Does creative bin design help you sort your trash?
Amanda Rappak

Recycling tops the list as the number one eco-action Canadians are taking, according to a 2008 report by Statistics Canada—with a 97 percent participation rate among households that are striving to be more environmental. But other recent stats indicate Canadian households still produce 13.4 million tonnes of waste, of which nearly three-quarters ended up in landfills. While the other quarter (approximately 3.6 million tonnes) gets sent for recycling, these 7-digit figures make it clear that our total waste production needs to be drastically reduced.


So what does it take to get people get in the habit of sorting their trash? Looking at how other countries encourage recycling, the answer—at least from our unscientific survey of recycling bins the world over—seems to be creative messaging and funky new receptacle designs. From quirky to wild to functional, pick your favourite design and tell us what you think Canada can learn!


image credit flickr.com/towodo

 

Comments

Companies, industrial sites and especially hospitals need to recycle their waste. Motivating factors for companies? Money and good PR (or the threat of bad PR because it affects their stock worth and they lose a competitive edge). http://www.calgary.ca/bluecart/ Calgary now has the home pick up bins where there is no sorting of recyclables. Everything goes into one huge bin provided by the city, and residents have no choice because they are paying for the service on their monthly utilities bill. It would be interesting to know the recycling rates when it is made that much easier with a little cost motivating factor. It certainly got my non-recycling spouse to pack the bin full!
Submitted by Tanya (guest) on Tue, 07/14/2009 - 11:00.
The problem isnt weather we recycle or not... its our consumption. This would make it easier for the common person to recycle, when i was in China it was great to have to have that option in all the public areas. In the end it comes down to consumption... on top of recycling we should be promoting reusing articles and if not more then recycling. Recycling only does not solve the problem, and the problem is over consumption and waste of materials.
Submitted by Anonymous (guest) on Fri, 07/10/2009 - 22:26.
YES, we can learn and become more creative base on the information that you are giving us .....This would be a great initiative that would improve, I think all the worries or dough ts on how to recycle in a more efficient way....great info and hopefully stimulate and empower people to learn and search more on the topic. Though the government needs to handle our garbage in a much more efficient way and to make sure that the recycling is being done by creating more responsible partnerships. I think that the Industries and Manufactures have the biggest part in all this because they need to understand and contribute to our recycling efficiency system by first and foremost reducing the amount of packaging to our recycling issues... Because if we seriously take the responsibility to do so they have to contribute to their part and realized that they have to minimized the amount of packaging, the choice of their materials, basically they should be the one who used recyclable and toxic free materials........Wouldn't be a great example of what we can achieve when we all participate in this endeavors that can improve our health and our everyday life and obviously a healthier planet!
Submitted by Nikole Belanger (guest) on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 13:20.

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