Well, at least better than trying to get them to recycle with threats as so many others try
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Manchester’s city centre residents are being tempted with prizes in exchange for promising to recycle more.
Anyone who lives in the city centre is being invited to enter a free prize draw by pledging to increase the amount of waste they recycle. They will have the chance to win prizes donated by Manchester businesses, including a pair of season tickets for the Warehouse Project club nights worth a total of £1,500.
Other prizes include vouchers for a meal at the Samsi Japanese restaurant, an overnight stay at the Marriott Manchester Victoria and Albert Hotel, and a package including a night’s stay at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, a meal for two at Mr Thomas’ Chop House and tickets for the Bridgewater Hall.
City-centre recyclers can also win a pair of season tickets for the Odeon cinema at the Printworks, a Thai cookery voucher at Chaophraya and a voucher for a facial at Malmaison.
All city centre residents can either recycle within their buildings or at the local recycling sites. Regardless of where they live, they can always recycle their paper, cardboard and cartons in their blue bins and their plastic bottles, glass, cans and tins in their brown bins.
And while this competition kind of thing is an idea we still are getting nowhere near where we should be getting to, namely actually paying people, yes, paying with money, to bring in their recyclables. It is done in other countries and it works very, very well.
But, as per usual, the talk is about recycling and it seems that the three “Rs” that used to be mentioned, namely “reduce, reuse, recycle” have become “recycle, recycle, recycle” with the other “Rs” having been discarded.
People are always encouraged and badgered and harangued to recycle more with no one mentioning reduce and especially reuse and repurposing. Instead of all the advertising to get people to recycle more it might be good to get a publication together or make one available that teaches people as to what they can do with items of waste other than throwing them into the recycling bins or the trash can.
The book “Let's Talk Rubbish” is a small volume that is trying to achieve just that; that is, teaching people as to what they can make from this or that item of waste, and it could be made available to councils to supply to their residents. Then again people can also obtain it themselves. It does not cost a fortune.
But it would appear that councils have a different line of thought in most cases and that is that they rather have people give them recyclables as they can make money of them and that is also the reason why they, the councils, have no intention of paying people to recycle. We can see that from the Manchester example here; the prizes are not from the council, they are from businesses.
© 2011
