Exceedingly Mundane

I blogged a couple of weeks ago, here, about having to drive my cardboard and magazines to a recycling bin a mile or two from my house. Well! I’m happy to report that I won’t have to do that any longer!

My city/county apparently changed contractors for their recycling pickup. Which, I failed to note in my previous post, we pay for, whether we use it or not. Of course, I’ve always been a recycle/reuse/save the planet kind of girl, so I’ve recycled stuff as long as I can remember. Anyway… last week, we all got dropped off on our driveway a brand new recycling bin! In a pretty green color 🙂 Inside was a list of what all they will and will not accept.

The main thing we lost is glass recycling. I’ve been recycling glass bottles for over 16 years, and now they will no longer accept them. Which is not bad, it’s probably one of the least recycled things in my bin. I used to have more kitchen things that were glass, but a lot of those have been converted to either plastic or paper containers. But, here’s the good news… they added paper of all kinds! The handout says you can recycle flattened cardboard, magazines, phone books, junk mail, office paper, etc. So, that’s going to be a huge boost for me! Not only do I no longer have to drive this stuff to the drop-off center, maybe I will get better about not throwing junk mail and stuff in the trash! Also, this is even more motivation for me to go through the piles of magazines I have around here. Shhh, don’t tell Tim where all I have them hiding!

All in all, I think it’s a good trade-off, giving up glass but gaining paper, cardboard and magazine recycling. I seem to have paper coming out of my ears 😀

Hooray for recycling!

I’ve blogged before that I’m really fortunate to live in a city that has curbside recycling, and has for over 15 years. They take newspaper, plastic, glass bottles and aluminum/tin cans. They do NOT take paper other than newspaper, so for years and years, I kept just throwing it in the garbage. And hating myself for doing it, but I didn’t have a choice.

Then, I found out that the next little town over (only a mile or so from my house really, since I live on the edge of town!), had drop-off recycling bins at their city fire stations. And that they took not only what my curbside picked up, but they also accepted paper and cardboard.

So, I’ve been breaking down cardboard boxes and going through old magazines and tossing catalogs that come in the mail. I had a big pile in the garage, that I finally loaded up in the SUV and drove to the bin a week or so ago. It felt really good to put all of this stuff in the overflowing recycling bin!