Hello, steemians, and welcome to my page, eh!
The town where I live encourages recycling, but does not enforce it. I chose to recycle what I can, and what they take for recycling. At this point in time, they take #1 and 2 plastic, and metal. They have a big multi compartment bin for the plastic and, in the warm months, they have a big bin for all the scrap metal. Since they don't provide the scrap bin in the winter, I save my cans all winter in a couple of garbage cans.
I use a tote to collect the plastic in until it's full, I keep the tote in the back porch.
When the tote is full, I haul it out to the Explorer to take it to the city bin.
It's only about a half a mile to the city maintenance building where the plastic recycling bin is, so it doesn't take very long to take care of it. I usually wait until I have to go out for something else, and then just add it to the trip.
I collect the cans in an empty cat litter bucket, that seems to work pretty well. When the bucket gets full, I take it outside and dump it into my storage trash can. When the snow all melts and the city puts their scrap bin out again, I'll take the garbage cans there and get rid of the winter's accumulation of cans.
We burn most of our paper trash, and I compost most of the food waste, so we only fill up a garbage can full of garbage about every other week or so. I'd like to think I'm not adding quite so much to the landfill by doing these things. I suppose there are a few more things I could be doing, but plastic packaging is so prevalent these days that it's hard to get away from it. I do what I can to lower my footprint on the earth, even with living in town.
Well, that's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting, and perhaps it gave you an idea or 2 for your own recycling efforts.
Thanks for stopping by and checking out my post!
Feel free to leave a comment or a question if you would like.
May the Steem Force be with you!
Good looking out for the planet! We chose not to pay for trash once we moved to the country. Luckily we don't have to sort our recycling and it's free, too. I might make a post about, actually. We don't have a burn yet but it's next on our list. We put almost all of our paper products, cept toilet paper, in our compost.
I hadn't thought about composting the paper waste. Do you shred it first, or just put in in the compost bin?
I should clarify. We don't pay monthly for trash service but twice a year I drive to dump with trash bags and recycling bags and separately to glass recycle bins. We do not have a burn "pile" but need one. We'd be able to cut trash to once a year and about 20 bucks instead of 40.
To answer your question...and some people do not like the idea of composting paper or cardboard with ink on it because of what chemicals are in the ink. We made the decision to and the worms don't seem to mind. ( ; first of, we mostly cold compot. Ie. Don't turn the pile. Started turning this year for faster results. We were just throwing everything in as it was, but the wind was carrying it away. We decided to start shredding. That's become mom's past time. However, we cut the plastic out of the envelopes and do not put glossy papers occasionally we miss some but it's easy to find it and pull it out because it doesn't break down. The big thing with adding paper is to not put it on too thick or it will smother air which makes compost anaerobic. A goopy slimy mess. Or maybe it's aerobic. I get things switched around haha. With it being shredded now, it's less of a problem. We mix it our straw as it's considered a brown, carbon, addition. The best items would be food dirtied paper towels, paper towel and toilet paper rolls, standard envelopes, plain cardboard, paper bags, etc. However, as I mentioned we use probably 95% of our paper products and have 1/3 the recycling bags now.
I try to recycle but I am not so consistent in doing it ;(.
It's not always easy to keep up with the recycling, it does take a certain amount of time.
Brilliant display of sustainability Amber!
We recycle all of our household waste and I compost the fruit and veggie scraps and peels too! It's permaculture live thorough and through here! that we love to live by!
Keep up the great work!
Darren!
Thank you!
Half the battle is to make it second nature, I think. Having a system helps a lot!
We're lucky (?) in Indiana that there's no deposit on beverage cans, however the recyclers pay around forty five cents a pound. I could fit a hundred pounds of crushed cans in my last van. Well worth the effort and trip!
Yes, that would certainly make it worth the trip!
Nice to see some recycling! We recycle all that we can and I use some big bags with cute owls on them for storing everything at home, it just makes it a little more fun!
Making it more enjoyable does help with the recycling efforts.
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SO refreshing to see a positive attitude and real action involved when recycling. Locally people are complaining about 4 weekly non recyclable waste collection as a way of improving recycling.
I've noticed that recycling plastics and cans can be quite a hassle for some people, especially when local guidelines aren't very clear. One thing that helped me was contacting my local waste management service to get specifics on what is recyclable. If you're in a similar situation, you might find it useful to check out your waste service's customer support. For instance, you could use the Republic Services phone number for guidance if they're your provider. It really makes the process much smoother!