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My first recycle day has come. It gives a whole new meaning to “taking out the trash”. I still had to go around the house to gather all the bins, bag them up and line the bins with new bags. But, instead of going as far as the curb, it meant loading up the car and driving about a mile away. (And today, it rained! Hard.)
But, I am determined. So I just had to buck up and do it.
I actually missed a week since I last wrote. I had an unexpected weekend visitor and my Saturday morning plans went out the window. So today’s trash was actually two weeks worth of recyclables. But it turned out to be an excellent test; I CAN go two weeks if necessary. But my bins were beginning to overflow, so I wouldn’t go longer than that. Thank goodness the weather has been cool so the bins did not smell. I do rinse most items, but there are some soda cans and juice bottles that I doubt were rinsed.
I had separated all recyclables into bags. I gathered all plastic bottles and jugs into one tall kitchen trash bag (also recyclable). I stuffed plastic wrap, frozen veggie bags, newspaper bags and grocery bags into another grocery bag. I dumped aluminum cans, aluminum foil and cat food cans into a separate bag. I didn’t have that many other metals — canned vegetables, jar lids, small fruit juice cans from the barroom — that’s about it. And I bagged up all glassware together. I didn’t see any mention of colors of glass that would make a difference, so green, brown, clear or whatever all went into the same bag.
I collected newspapers in a large cardboard box, so I just took the whole box since it is recyclable. And I had collected cereal boxes and other food mix boxes into another cardboard box.
Everything just barely fit into the back of my Prius. It’s a hatchback, but not an especially large one. Still it fit, so that also passed the two-week test.
I drove to the recycle center — about a mile away from my home. They open at 6:00 a.m. year-round; I got there at 9:00 a.m. No one was there — quite possibly because of the rain. It’s a public drop-off so I didn’t expect to see attendants, but I thought I might run into other recyclers. There were none.
At this particular recycle center, there are only two dumpsters: one labeled “Paper Only” and the other “Glass, Metal, Plastic.” I wasn’t sure if “Metal” included aluminum, or if “Paper Only” included cardboard, so I peeked in the dumpsters before putting anything in them. The bin marked “Paper Only” had more cardboard in it than paper, so I dumped both my paper box and my cardboard box into it. That included paper, thin cardboard and corrugated cardboard all in the same bin. And I tossed all my other recyclables, including the questionable aluminum, into the other dumpster.
The reason I worry if this was okay is because I’ve been to another recycle center on the other side of the city (about a half hour drive for me) and that one has a separate dumpster for everything — paper vs cardboard vs. corrugated cardboard, and aluminum vs metal, vs glass, vs different levels of plastics. You really have to sort it all. (Way too much work in my opinion. I wanted this to be easy.) I think I rather like my own neighborhood’s place. I actually did more sorting at home than I needed to.
Now I know I can collect glass, all metals and all plastics in the same bins. And collecting paper in a cardboard box turned out to be a good idea.
The entire morning’s event took about a half hour. That included collecting the bins, loading up the car and making the run. Not bad at all.
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