As you might realise, we’ve spent a good deal of our life in Granville: originally this came under Parramatta Council, more recently it was with Holroyd. In both cases there were robust recycling schemes implemented for household garbage, covering such materials as paper/cardboard, most metal items and plastic milk/drink bottles. We worked fairly diligently at utilising this, with Reen even insisting that containers be washed/rinsed out before gong into the bin.
Hence it’s been a bit of a “culture shock” to find that, as we’ve travelled around, lots of places don’t appear to have any form of similar scheme operating. Sometimes there does appear to be recycling at the domestic level—yellow-lidded bins in the streets—but nothing for the caravan park or showground that we’re staying at. When I go looking for reasons mostly I can find none stated, although in one case the site owners/operators note that waste collection is not by the local Council but by private contractor.
Quite a few places have some arrangement in place for the 10c refundable items, usually managed by a local charity such as Lions or Rotary; and these seemed well supported :).
I’ve noted also that the further we get from “civilisation”, the less likely any recycling scheme.
This all raises the question (in the words of a famous professor): why is it so?
Are travellers unable to separate recyclable goods from genuine landfill? Perhaps because their “home” environments are so different from each other that they genuinely don’t know? [This seems like a pretty long bow to me!] Is the percentage of boofheads and drunken yobs in the travelling population so high that recycling is too costly?
Hmmm…