Recycling

Paper and cardboard is probably the easiest stuff to recycle. I have a separate trash can with a lid that pops up and we toss junk mail in there, empty cereal boxes, etc etc.

I probably wouldn't be as good about recycling as I am now if it weren't for my daughter. She is really like the recycling person in our house. Every day she makes a run through the house looking for the things that she can put in the recycling bin. Thanks for sharing.

I know that I should be much better about recycling because it saves our planet and I do try a bit with by recycling our cans and glass but I never really thought about recycling my cardboard and papers. I just started thinking about our garbage the other night because we had some old boxes that we were throwing out that we had used for our Christmas decorations and the boxes were getting old so we through them out and I realized the next morning that the boxes were gone but the garbage was still her so we were thinking someone must of taking our old yucky boxes ans we were thinking why but now i realize that it was recycable and the recycable man took it...

If there were more incentives period for reccyling or doing other things like cutting down on waste, I think more people would get involved. The problem is, government and special interest groups do things to penalize people instead, like CHARGING for a recyling bin or CHARGING for people to have a larger trash can. I feel that incentives should be given as benefits without penalizing anybody, because it just makes me angry that people are penalized. For instance, there were some discussions around for awhile about those plastic grocery bags. I bag all my groceries in plastic unless I specifically need paper bags for something. Sometimes I reuse the plastic bags, other times I don't. In some of those discussions, people were talking about charging people for the bags or refusing to have them in the stores, more or less forcing people to use reusable or cloth bags. I think this is lousy and it definitely does not make me want to be 'green' since somebody else is trying to force me to do something I have no intention of doing, ever. Now if I were offered an incentive like 10% off my total IF I brought cloth bags or didn't use bags at all, if I wanted to take advantage of that, I just might. Clearly I wouldn't do it every single time but if it were a choice I might from time to time.

You are right, there does need to be some sort of incentive for people to cut down the amount of trash that they produce. One thing that I have thought of that would work in our community would be for those that regularly fil their recycling bins to have a slight discount in their property taxes. I say property taxes because we have city pickup which is paid for with a portion of our property tax.

To start off by reusing is a great thing. The more time that goes on, the more that you will see that you will start doing it more and more and it truly will become habit for you.

It used to only be important for me to recycle because it did put a little bit of our money back in my pocket, but now, it is important to me for different reasons. We have a recycle can that comes with our trash pickup and though it doesn't put money in our pocket, it still makes me happy because I know that I'm doing my part to help save the earth.

It is good for him, for you and for the earth. I am happy to hear that you are doing your part to save our resources.

We have a system that is similar to what you've described in Florida. We are on the city service route, so we have our trash pickup regulated by the city. We have a separate can for trash and one for the recycle stuff. Both of these are picked up on the same day (Tuesday) but at different times in the day. We pull both cans out front on Monday night and then on Tuesday morning the trash truck comes first and picks up the stuff from the green can. A couple hours later the recycle truck comes and empties out the blue can.

I wish that there was something like this that was offered at some of the shopping centers here in town for those that aren't as lucky as to be able to have curbside recycling offered for no additional price.

I'm so glad to hear that you are this dedicated to recycling and reusing. Thank you very much for sharing.

That's the same reason that aluminum was the extent of our recycling when we lived with my mother. They wanted to charge her more to have a recycling pick up each week but as a courtesy they would give her an extra Herbie for no cost at all. I personally think it is crazy.

Yes, you are right. We do reuse a lot of things in our house before we send them to truly be recycled, so in essence they are recycled more than just one time. Not only do I sell clothes that we no long use in yard sales or donate them to charity, we also buy a lot of our clothes that way as well.

That is a great idea. We've also used the leftover wax from candles to make more candles because it saves the resource and it also saves money.

As I mentioned to another person, I really do need to think of more crafts that I can do with the children concerning items that can be reused. Since my son and my niece are at an age now that they are really starting to enjoy crafts I need to look for more crafts that they can make with items that would ordinarily go into the trash.

I've actually told my mother and sister that they should keep their stuff that can be recycled separate from their regular trash and then they can just bring it over to our house and we will put it in our bin. I think that everyone should make more of an emphasis on recycling as well.

My view is that the incentive is the fact that the landfills are not being filled nearly as rapidly as they were in the past. However, I also agree that the recyclable objects should be used in the country where they originated from as well.

I do know that there are certain places that do have more of an emphasis on recycling and I think that it is great to hear that both your family and your boyfriend's family recycle.

It is so great to hear that there are other people that recycle as well and I think that it is great that the city's staff has the bins out for you to sort the things into.

We used to save our pop cans and take them to the recycling plant to get a little bit of cash back as well, but now that we have our Rosie, we just put those into our recycling just like we do all of the other recyclable items.

That is something that I need to do more with the children is turn things that look like they could be trash into treasures of some sort. We really like to do crafts here and there are some things that I save to use for crafts and I really should try to save more things as well.

We average a bit more true trash per week than your family does, but I think that a big portion of that comes into the fact that between my son who is still potty training and my fifteen month old niece we have a lot of diapers. In retrospect with my son I wish I would have used cloth diapers but the appeal of the convenience of disposable diapers was just too overbearing for me.