Can't We Try to Recycle More?

We don't have a lot of drycleaning bags but the ones we do get I put in with the plastic bags for recycling at the grocery store. Same with plastic produce bags (which I try not to use when I can).

I had been collecting #5 plastics (yogurt cups, margarine tubs, etc.) to mail to a recycling place but found out recently that I can take them to Whole Foods in Reston to be recycled. Some people told me that Patriot will accept them but our company in Ashburn Village does not.

We have a walk-in pantry in the kitchen with the wire shelving units. I removed one of the bottom shelves and our two Rubbermaid bins fit neatly underneath and are very convenient. The cover and bottom of the packaging of the cake I bought at Harris Teeter are recyclable - yay! And the cake itself - chocolate chocolate cake was awesome, by the way.

It's annoying to see houses in the neighborhood putting cardboard boxes out with trash (and not broken down flat, to boot!). Do they just not know? Not care? They have to put them out one day or another - might as well be the recycling day.

 

A few weeks ago we visited the National Building Museum in DC. It's not one of the big major museums, but it was very interesting, and I recommend it. One of the exhibits was on recycling, and it was presented in a very visual fashion. It was striking how different communities behave so differently. I forget the exact numbers, but they showed something like: in the U.S. as a whole we recycle ~30% (by mass) of our trash. The city that recycles the least is Houston, recycling only about 3%, and the city that recycles most is San Francisco, recycling about 65%.

 

Instead of paper bags for the yard waste you can also use plastic containers.

 

I could agree with you more and wish stores would cooperate with this. I shop at Costco a lot for our family of 5 and it drives me BONKERS to even recycle the packaging for things.........today it was the cardboard for the oj and the milk containers. And this was after turning down the plastic bags for my clothes purchases and the cardboard boxes to put the boxes of milk and oj in!

I wish I was more creative and had more time to be able to re-use jars, bottles, etc.

 

That's more like it - my parents' house has one of these also, but I've yet to see a stand-alone trash can do the same thing. See, I just don't generally do my cooking in the garage where the recylcing bin is. Since the majority of our recyclable trash is from food packaging, this kind of design makes it more conducive for someone to separate trash right when they need to instead of making an out-of-the-way trip.

 

Your blue recycling toter says White Paper only. Do you recycle all of your stuff in that?