In the most recent survey, just over half of respondents said they recycled paper on a regular basis, just under half recycled glass, and a third recycled cans. Goods that used to be long term purchases are often now regarded as disposable. In rich countries, the average household contains around 10,000 things . Given that they must be chosen, bought, maintained, cleaned, stored, repaired and eventually disposed of, they end up costing us the one thing we can't buy more of - time. City dwellers in rich industrialised countries generate up to 100 times more refuse per person than city dwellers in developing countries.
Recycling makes more sense for some materials than others.
Top of page Waste and the environment - the bigger picture A tale of two economies In terms of the way we structure our economy, there are two possible models. The model we pursue now is that of mass production of disposable products. This approach is capital intensive, generally favouring large corporations. Raw materials are extracted on a huge scale. They are transported around the world to be assembled into products on production lines, using machines or cheap unskilled labour.