Yeah I’m not surprised. Roughly half of my workplaces in the past 20 years had exactly zero recycling going on, also my current one.
If the government started cracking down, don’t think people and businesses would say “ok this is good so we will do it,” or do you think they would resist?
Honestly I don’t think it’s against regulations per se. One work place had only one big bin in the backyard, because it’s been like that since the 50s? The other had all the bins in the yard, but inside they threw everything into one.
Of course either scenario could mean the regulations might not be strict enough.
Or maybe they are not enforced nationally but locally. One town I lived in had “waste”, “burnable waste”, paper, cardboard, plastic, bottles etc. Very confusing and I know from observation that most residents did not get it. Next town the system was quite different.
TBH I have no idea about the legal/administrative situation, but recycling is definitely a big thing here.
I don’t think there’s a way they can crack down. They can bark, but they won’t bite. And if they did bite, people would ignore them and vote for other parties in next elections. Would probably mean that the right-wing extremist party “True Finns” would gain a lot of votes and would probably become the biggest party.
But also, the bite would be so toothless that it probably wouldn’t really have the abovementioned effect. Here’s why:
The Finnish police won’t enforce a crackdown like that. They have a habit of deciding what laws they care about and what they don’t, and this is definitely one they wouldn’t care about. The government can tell them to do a crackdown of a kind, but the police will just ignore that. If they are asked about it, they’ll say “we lack the resources for that”. Which is true. If you go to Wikipedia and see how many policemen Finland has per capita, it’s about one quarter of that in Germany, for example. They really don’t and won’t have any resources for that.
Interesting. Also, I don’t think it should be a police issue. There should just be a department of waste management, and they have agents who enforce fines. Also a reporting system where people can cash in by tattling on offenders. ;)
Not in Finland. Here the idea is that such inpectors cost money, and you don’t want to waste money.
They also refuse to hire more parking wardens because those would cost money – even if in the end there would be more money in the city’s coffers than before hiring them.They can make a rule, but absolutely nobody will enforce it.
Is there a national police? A group that doesn’t get to choose what to enforce?
Like the FBI or the NCA?
Yes there is. There is no other police force than the national police. And they do choose what to enforce.
lol. That’s ridiculous. How does anything get done?!