How often do you not take the extra few steps towards the recycling bin? The answer for most people is fairly often. Are most people just lazy? Do they not care at all? Are they not able to? You probably have some kind of seemingly valid excuse, but in reality it's not valid at all. People can recycle but often don't because they either don't see it as important or are just lazy.
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| SOURCE: http://answerangels.com.au |
In the article from Huffington Post, "The Psychology Behind Why People Don’t Recycle," Erin Schumaker, the Senior Healthy Living Editor who has a Masters from the school of Journalism at Northwestern University, delves into the reasoning behind people not recycling. She found that the excuse people mostly use is that it is not accessible to them. It is stated that about 25% of people in the U.S. don't have curbside recycling, but that just means that people must take it to a local recycling drop off center. These people obviously don't care enough to drop it off at the recycling center or don't know that they have a local recycling center and hadn't cared to look up to that point.
About 26% of people in this article's poll said that it either takes up too much time, they always forget to recycle, or that they are uneducated about recycling. All of these excuses boil down to one factor: people are lazy. People who say it takes too much time obviously believe it is not worth it and don't understand the importance of recycling. People who say they always forget needs to learn the importance of recycling so that they take more of an effort to remember to recycle. People who say they are uneducated about recycling would take an effort to learn if they really cared. The tricky part is getting these people to really care.
Up next: I will research the incentives that have been implemented to preserve the environment in the past and why they haven't worked.
