reduce, reuse, recycle

We are kind of nutty at our house about the recycling. On the news a few nights ago, we heard a story about the Salt Lake County Landfill. It is filling up quite rapidly. The report stated that the current landfill will run out of space in less than 50 years. That might not seem like a big deal, but when they do run out of space, the only option will be to haul the waste to another location which will likely be 100 ‘s of miles away. And it will be done by an outside company—not the city or the county. The costs for this service will be 10 times the cost for the current waste removal services. The sad part is: over 80% of the waste that is going to the Salt Lake County Landfill is recyclable.

I had a conversation not long ago with a fellow neighbor and recycler. She mentioned that she knew some people who were down right annoyed at the fact that if they were to recycle it would cost them an additional $5 to $10 a month for recycling services. However, these same people don’t flinch a bit about paying the extra $10 a month to have 2 garbage cans.

What’s the difference people???

The difference is that if you are responsible and take the extra few seconds to separate your trash from the items that can be recycled you are reducing the amount of garbage that goes to the landfill. You are being responsible with our resources. You are helping keep the world a more beautiful place.

We separate our recyclable items into 2 different containers:

Paper in one. Everything else in another container.

First Container: Paper. Newspaper. Junk Mail. Catalogs. Magazines. All of those extra copies from the computer printer. Cereal boxes. Macaroni & cheese boxes. Cake mix boxes. Cardboard boxes.

example: recycle the cake mix box, not the plastic bag

Second Container: Everything else: aluminum cans (pop). Steel cans (vegetables, fruit, soup). Plastic (milk jugs, yogurt containers, cottage cheese containers, bread bags, grocery bags). Anything with one of those triangle arrow things.

The only thing that is not recycled is glass. I wish I would find a place that would recycle glass.

Other things that do not recycle: pizza boxes that have touched food, plastic bags (like sandwich bags) and food (but that’s OK because it can go to the compost bin!!—just not rice and meat)

It makes me think of living in Michigan. When you would buy bottles or cans of pop, you would pay a deposit. So a 12 pack of Diet Coke would cost an extra $1.20. However, the streets, roadways, trails, and parks were never littered with drink cans and bottles. I knew of a little family that would go to a local recreation area to gather pop cans for FHE. They would walk around until they found enough cans to take in to recycle and then use the money they got back to buy a treat. They always looked forward to those days when they would gather cans to see how much money they could get back. So, next time you are in Michigan, notice how free the roadways are of cans and bottles. Way to go Michigan!!