Blog Action Day: Get the Picture? Recycle!

Millions of consumers who recycle every day think that because they recycle their bottles and cans, everyone else is recycling too. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Americans waste (landfill, incinerate, or litter) twice as many beverage containers as we recycle.

In 2006, more than 138 billion beverage bottles and cans were not recycled. Nationwide, that’s about 460 per capita— up from 300 per capita just a decade ago, and this trend of increased wasting is expected to continue.

There is a great environmental cost to replacing billions of wasted bottles and cans with new containers made from virgin materials: in terms of pollution, energy squandered, and habitats disrupted by mining, drilling, and other industrial activities. (CRI: Container Recycling Institute)

Like many small cities around the U.S.A., my town's private garbage company picks up plastic/glass one week, paper the next, and so on.

I am ashamed to admit that for years, my husband and I did not participate, at least not very often. (And I even had a Grateful Dead bears' window sticker on my car windshield touting "Repair, Recycle, Reuse: We Are All We Have.")

THEN, my husband left...me, house, kids...

After my husband's departure, I discovered (duh!) that there's a whole lot of paper surrounding what I purchase at the grocery store. As I was opening a box of frozen waffles, I noticed this as I was tossing the box into the trash can...

NOW,

I look down my street on "paper" recycling day, and behold a few small blue crates filled only with newspapers.

If I look back at my front yard, I usually see two or three large clear plastic bags stuffed with newspapers, advertisements, envelopes, cardboard boxes from frozen dinners, frozen foods, yogurt cartons, toilet and paper towel rolls...

On "plastic/glass/aluminum can" recycling day, it is less striking in its contrast to others on my street...still, there are items in my bags that are not in other people's. For example, I wash out and include the little yogurt containers, the plastic laundry containers, etc.

Needless to say, my regular trash container is rarely full; and I do not need to put out the garbage every week. I often skip a week or even two without trouble.

Perhaps an odd thing about which to brag...but, hey I think our town's landfill will last longer...yes, just because I don't throw away the cartons that surround my food, shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, water, cola...

You get the picture! Don't you?