In recent months the talk about sustainability seems to have increased. This is partly due to most political parties making it a point of focus in their campaigns; after all, Green sells! One possibility to live more sustainably is to recycle. The City of Maastricht seems to have hopped on the wagon and now offers its citizens the possibility to recycle all kinds of plastic waste in addition to the normal collections of paper, glass, tins and drink cartons.
“I’m excited about this. In Germany we already have it and I felt weird just throwing everything into one bin here”, a German UM student tells me. So does she think the usual student will go through the hassle of collecting yet another type of rubbish? “Considering the typical student house, probably not”, she laughs, but then reconsiders. “If students can save money, they will, so maybe it will work.” She was hinting at the rather expensive red garbage bags, which will presumably fill up less quickly if plastics are separated.
“But does this mean we need an extra rubbish bin?” my housemate asks when I tell her about the new recycling opportunity. That would make sense, given that we are talking about garbage, which can get somewhat smelly if left lying around for a while. Which is not at all unthinkable in the average student household.
UCM student Annika Lie has made it the subject of her bachelor’s thesis to research recycling behaviour. As part of her research, she also investigated the benefits and limitations of recycling. “I’m not so sure that collecting different types of rubbish is the most effective way to go”, she muses, hinting at the possibility to separate the garbage after it has been collected.
A friend who overhears us has not yet read the notice sent to Maastricht’s households in the past weeks. Unfortunately, it was only in Dutch. Not surprisingly – after all, we are in the Netherlands – but how can the foreign part of the population, especially the students, be expected to comply if they can’t read the instructions?