live from sublurbia

[Think Of A Something Thursday!]

mmmm toast Recycling at home has been a bit hard for me; mostly because I didn’t work at it. And I couldn’t figure out a system that wouldn’t be a pain in the butt. I think the fact that we had so much to recycle had a lot to do with it. Pop cans. Canned food cans. Pizza boxes. Frozen Soylent Orange Cutlet boxes. Price-a-roni boxes. Sugar bomb pop flake containers.

Some day my great grandchildren will curse my name for the number of individual half-liter water bottles I threw away. Or they’ll be feeding it to Mr. Fusion and happy at their landfill discovery of the results of my “It’s not easy enough” attitude.

The first home the hub and I shared had community recycle bins. I had a counter top set of buckets we sorted goods into. That set up didn’t work well, and it was messy. But we did what we could do, when we could. Bringing home pop cans and bottled water bottles from work (when I still consumed them all day long) as the recycling bins had either moved with the previous tenants or never been provided at all.

When we moved to the new house with the smaller galley kitchen, I tried the counter-top solution again. Messy again. I tried keeping the recycle bins the county provided in the pantry. A pain to keep up, haul out on Monday nights. And they suffered from out of sight, out of mind syndrome.

The next attempt was a second garbage can. We squeezed in the cans side by side at one end of the galley: one for garbage, one for recyclables. That was … okay. I was still transferring to the recycle bins in the pantry – it was still a pain. Plus the plastic bags to line it or simply making time to hose out the can? Many many therbligs and stinky and sticky to boot. And that was with rinsing recyclables out; some dribbles still got missed.

So we changed the can idea around. We moved and now keep the big bulky recycle bins outside (though our local hardware big box stores sell special cart kits you build from PVC piping for $79). Our frequent rains help keep them cleanish, and they’re out of the way. I moved the recycle can to another location in the house that doesn’t generate sticky recyclables, and set up a folding cloth laundry sorter instead.

Narrow but tall and deep, it’s light and can move anywhere. The bag comes out and is machine washable. Recyclables, after being rinsed, are tossed in there any which way – I separate it all the night before recycling day. Done.

But that’s just our day to day recyclables (including old sippy cups and baby bottles – our county recycles many things). Other places we can recycle what isn’t reusable include:

Household disposable batteries: http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=ls&serviceid=126
Rechargeable batteries: http://www.rbrc.org/call2recycle/dropoff/index.php
CFL bulbs (though I haven’t had any blow on me yet): http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/disposing_of_di.php
recycling shoes that can’t be passed down: http://www.nike.com/nikebiz/nikebiz.jhtml?page=27&cat=reuseashoe

But also check with your local waste services division, especially you Californians – there are lots of local recycling options.

Most office supply stores have cell phone recycling drop offs, and some stores also accept CFLs for recycling (as does IKEA). Ask around, dig around, as a last resort, mail things off (when possible). Become a neighborhood drop off point, maybe? Whatever it takes to get people recycling.

Of course, recycling is a last option – reuse and reduce, in opposite order. :)

*h/t my geeky sister for the term