Re: Hmmm
> 100% of the people I know in the UK recycle because everyone has excellent recycling facilities at home
I'm not sure where you live, but my experiences have been somewhat more varied.
I used to live in a house, which had three bins - general, cardboard, and mixed glass/plastic/metal. And as far as I'm aware, the people on that street generally put things in the right bins.
I then moved to a flat in a large complex. And that had rubbish-chutes for general rubbish, and then larger communal bins, again for general, cardboard and mixed recycling.
Things were a bit more complicated there. Generally, I didn't find the chutes too useful; they're only just big enough for a small carrier bag's worth of rubbish, necessitating many small trips back and forth. And even then, the odds were good that they'd gotten clogged up by someone trying to ram something too large down them!
As a result, I generally defaulted to carrying stuff over to the large communal bins. But even then, while the general bins were emptied daily, the "recyclable" bin schedule seemed to be random, so these were often filled to overflowing. At which point, stuff got dumped into the general bins.
Equally, while people generally respected the rules for cardboard, all too often people would dump unrecyclable junk into the mixed bin; most commonly, they'd dump a binbag full of recyclables into the bin, rather than emptying said bag into the bin. Which then meant that the recycling was potentially too contaminated for recycling.
Now, I've moved to a flat in a complex with a fairly odd layout; there's essentially a single thin path between the buildings which is too narrow for vehicles.
Which means that I'm back to having a single "general" bin, which is collected weekly. As is everyone around me!
I am still separating out recyclable stuff, but even then; according to the council website, aside from the main recycling centres (which are generally very busy; it can take over an hour to queue up and unload), there's just two public recycling points in the city centre which take mixed recycling, both of which are tiny and likely to be overfilled. And they're both far enough that I have to drive to them...