Householders split over incentives for recycling

Publishing the 2007 Survey of Attitudes and Behaviours in relation to the Environment on Thursday, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that as with previous surveys, the latest poll suggested older people, more affluent people and those living in rural areas were those “most likely to be engaged in waste reduction and recycling”.

The survey was carried out by British Market Research Bureau, with 3,618 people taking part.

Defra said it found that the main motivation for an environmentally friendly lifestyle is guilt about harming the environment.

Environment Minister, Joan Ruddock, commented: “The most encouraging finding in this survey is the majority of people believing that its up to individuals to accept responsibility by making lifestyle changes. This is vitally important as 40% of climate change emissions come from our actions as individuals.

“Government is determined to make it possible for people to choose greener lifestyles and to provide advice and encouragement,” she said.

Recycling

Although surveys of environmental behaviour are notoriously unreliable, this one found that more than 80% of those surveyed claiming to put paper out for recycling collections, while around 60% said they recycled glass or metal packaging waste.

Around half said they recycled cardboard or plastic packaging, with four in ten saying they recycled garden waste. Just one in ten said they recycled their shoes.

Commenting on the results, Defra said that there was some awareness among those surveyed concerning what recycling services were offered by their local authorities. “For most items, people's perceptions of what their local council collected for recycling were reasonably well matched to reality,” the Department said.

Recycling banks also had a high visibility with 84% knowing where their local bring banks were, and two thirds of these claiming to use the facility.

The materials most commonly taken to a recycling bank, as a percentage of all those who use banks only, were glass bottles and jars (72%), followed by clothes (44%), shoes (35%), paper (32%), cardboard (29%) and tins/foil (26%).

Despite this, however, the main reasons for those who do not recycle is the “lack of doorstep collections, lack of recycling facilities locally, and lack of space to store recyclables.

Some four in 10 people claim to be already recycling as much as they can.

Elsewhere in the survey, which also looked at other environmental issues like transport and energy, just over half those interviewed admitted to throwing food away, at least occasionally, because it had gone off, and almost one in three said they did this very often or quite often. Only 15% claimed they never did this.

Defra also pointed out that a high proportion – almost six in ten – said they did not avoid buying goods they felt had too much packaging.

Among people who had a garden, just over a third said they used a compost heap or bin to compost garden or kitchen waste.