November 15th was America Recycles Day. While it is good to recycle, many people won't do it because of the following reasons: 

1. “It's inconvenient.” This seems to be the number one reason why people don’t recycle – they don’t want to put in the extra effort. Some places have no pick-up like in many places in Kentucky so in order to recycle you have to DRIVE your items to a bin or recycling center.

2. “I don't have space in my home to recycle.” The lack of space is an issue since some barely have room for the trash can.

3. “I'm not getting paid to do it or it pays too little.” In states that have bottle deposits citizens percieve that they're getting paid for returning the cans or others collect cans and get the money for it. 

4. “Recycling doesn’t make any difference. Why bother?” Same story with people who don't vote. 

5. “It's too hard to know what can and can't be recycled.” It is hard to figure out what can be recycled, especially when the little triangle of arrows doesn't mean your recycling center will take that "#5", the arrows just designate that the number inside of them is the type of petroleum-generated plastic.

I applaud grocery stores like Baesler's Market in Terre Haute, Indiana who are trying to get the jump on these excuses by encouraging shoppers to not worry about recycling at all but to use a reusable CRESBI crate instead. Their attractive CRESBI system pricing and $0.25 reusable credit per crate are great incentives to get people to think differently but still benefit the earth. Since a CRESBI crate can replace up to 6 plastic bags - depending on what you're buying - that's a lot of bags where the need to recycle is proactively avoided!