Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Recycling

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with recycling.  I love (okay, like) that I'm not adding to the massive amounts of trash in the landfill, but I hate that it stacks up before I finally get it taken to the recycling center.
I think that I really started trying harder to recycle after Nathan was born.  I got to thinking about how many diapers I threw in the trash.  Then I got to thinking about how many babies were in our town, and how many diapers were being put in the landfill every week by all those babies combined.  And the thought of all that poop in a pile just kind of grossed me out.  Even though I had already decided to do cloth diapers for finance's sake, that thought just reinforced my decision.
But diapers are not hard to decompose, I would think.  I got to thinking about the amount of plastics and glass everyone throws away - that stuff isn't decomposing for a long time.
The boys have a movie called Mighty Machines (basically a bunch of videos of different machinery doing jobs).  They have one of a trash truck doing it's route and it shows the landfill.  I've never been to our county's, so I was surprised at how huge it was.  And gross.
So I started trying to recycle.  I only do things that our local recycling center takes (#1 and #2 plastics, soup cans, pop cans, glass, paper, and cardboard).  Once we take those things out, a week's worth of trash is only 2 bags, and that includes diapers.  (If I was religious about recycling junk mail, it would probably be less than that.)
But I hate how it stacks up!  My storage totes take up too much room to keep on the back porch, so we keep them in the shop.  (I wouldn't need the storage totes if I took it to the recycling center every week - but, let's be real, that is never going to happen until I'm an old lady and have nothing better to do.)  I keep a basket by the back door to take the stuff out to the shop when it's full.  But because I (or someone else in this house whose household duties include the garbage, which in my book includes recycling by extension) am too lazy to take the basket out to the shop every week, there is always a precariously balanced pile of soup cans, milk jugs, alfredo jars, and shampoo bottles on the shelves by the back door.  I hate that. .
But I do like the thought that by doing this little bit, it's keeping some of the non-biodegradables out of the landfill.
And if everyone did that little bit, which isn't hard, just slightly inconvenient, it would make the world a more beautiful place.

3 comments:

Kaleena M. said...

When I was doing my cloth diaper research I read that it takes a disposable diaper 250-500 years to decompose. Craziness!

I think it is great that you recycle. I have thought that I really should consider it especially with all those baby food jars...

Maybe I need to find my closest recycling center and try to figure out how I can do that!

Tricia Goodwin said...

You are right, actually taking the stuff to the center is a huge pain. We get $ back for a lot of items here.... And that still isn't enough motion for me to do it regularly.

The Other Rachel said...

In California everyone takes it for granted that you'll recycle. I read a church newsletter once where the pastor was talking about how important it was to recycle (thought that was overboard, but no one else noticed). You don't even have to sort anything, because the city does it for you and recycles every bit that it can. No one seems to recycle at all in Texas, though! I was at a party right after we got here where the people were talking about what a joke recycling is, how it doesn't actually do any good, etc. What a difference!