We've gotten comfortable, a little too comfortable. It's become much too convenient to simply throw things away before we think about their ability to be used again. We do this because throwing away trash is perceived as easy
and recycling as hard.
Trash cans, rather than recycling cans, are placed all around us making it very easy and convenient to throw things away. We dismiss the fact that these materials will to go the landfill to sit forever. If we think about the lifecycle of a material, wouldn't we want it to live forever rather than slowly die?
One of the goals of Think Before You Throw is to make the convenient, inconvenient, in order to re-program ourselves into thinking about that which is easy and that which is hard. Because of this, American Disposal has converted each of our personal trash bins into a recycling bin. This encourages the recycling of those materials used at each of our desks such as printer paper or plastic water bottles. In fact, almost everything we could potentially throw away at our office desk is recyclable. Understandably, we will all still produce non-recyclable trash and therefore waste bins will still be present in the office at centralized locations with the hope that trash will be disposed in these bins only when necessary. Recycling, in turn, will be disposed of properly, more frequently, and in higher volume, since it is more convenient.
This is an easy thing, you can do at your office building or even at home! Start by situating recycling bins about your home in places where you usually throw trash away, making it much more accessible to throw things in a recycling bin, instead of a trash can.
Note: The image above was taken over one month ago in our American Disposal break room. The image is of our trash can, not our recycling bin. Look at how many things placed in this trash can could have been recycled, had its consumer taken the time to THINK before THROWING. All of these recyclables will end up in a landfill to be wasted as a valuable resource because of an apathetic attitude. As a company whose job is concerned with proper waste disposal, we can and WE WILL do better.
