apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

the one that slips through the crack for me is aluminum foil. We can recycle it where I live, but I'm rarely motivated to keep dirty aluminum foil around 'till garbage day. Everything else is either dry, or a container that can be easily sealed or rinsed.

what do you do with take-out foam containers?

I had to answer that I recycle when it's convenient, because in my community, you can't recycle anything unless you have a car that will take you to the (far away) recycle depots! How ironic.

Why do communities set us up like this?

I do always leave my bottles and cans beside the dumpster, for the bottle pickers.

I've got a pretty good system for the larger quantity recyclables: paper, cans, glass, plastic, etc.

But, have been thinking about how to handle the low quantity items efficiently (in my mind, at least) such as batteries, gray cardboard, mail detritus, etc. Should I look for a shredder to reside under the sink next to the trash for ALL the items with identifiable information?? Do they hold recyclable bags for the confetti? I don't want recycling to become a PITA but want to be a good citizen and do my part.

Why do communities set us up like this?

If you ever find out, do share the answer. Phoenix offers curb-side recycling for single-family homes but not for apartments, so we have to haul our recycling to a community drop-off area. When we suggested to the apartment management that they might want to have a recycling pick-up for the development, they looked at us as if we'd grown an extra head.

Office plazas in Minneapolis had recycling a decade ago; most in Phoenix don't have it now.

I recycle at home, but what frustrates me is that our school district no longer recycles and we go through an enormous amount of paper and other materials. We set up a program at the high school where I teach, only to discover that the people picking up the materials were simply throwing them out at the behest of some bean counting wonk at the central office. Our plan of attack this year is to get all of the clubs involved with "greening up" the space and toting the recyclables ourselves.

It's just disconcerting that the fourteenth largest school district in America isn't doing its part when it would be so simple (and possibly lucrative) to institutionalize the process. And, unfortunately, in a world of mandates and "accountability," this issue is often shoved to the sideline.

School starts next week in my region, so off we go to print on both sides of the page, go paperless when possible, and engage kids in recycling!

We have some points in the city where one can drop off stuff for recycling (plastic, paper, glass) but we have seen them dumbed into the same truck many times - I doubt they are really being recycled. And if you do not have a car, it is difficult to off load big quantities of any material.

Jenn, I can top that. When I worked at the US Patent and Trademark Office we would generate enormous amounts of paper-- a patent application could run anywhere from 50 to hundreds of pages, plus we had to print out several similarly sized documents for each application to prove whether the idea was or wasn't patentable. Each patent examiner went through several reams of paper every week. And there were no recycling facilities AT ALL. It all just got thrown in the trash! For a government agency that generates so much revenue, that's shameful.

I recycle everything I can at home, but I find it incredibly frustrating that there is so little emphasis on businesses recycling as opposed to residential recycling. I work in a huge skyscraper owned by one of the largest property holders in the city and we do not have recycling facilities for anything (paper, bottles, etc.), so you can imagine how much waste this produces. I'm all for personal responsibility, but how about some legislative action to ensure corporations do their part?

At our place on Cape Cod, you have to take recycling to the dump yourself. The dump in our area is sort of fun to go to--they have a building where you can take things other people might like and also pick up--free--anything you want. I've gotten a Roget's thesaurus to keep at our house there, several other books that were good reads, a very old and beautiful etched glass hurricane lamp, and on and on--and we've also gotten rid of lots of stuff that way.

As for dumping off recyclables: the dump shedule is based upon when you're driving the long trip back home. Then it's always closed, so you have to take the recycling all the way home in the car. . . .

My household recycles as much as we can though somethings my local trash pick up won't take (like thin plastic packaging) I take any grocery bags that pile up despite my switch to net bags (the pile is MUCH smaller) to my grocery store which recycles them. Also I have a compost pile, outside my apartment for my tiny garden.

A friend of mine recently brought up that the cost of recycling is very high in terms of pollution (he went as far to say it is more polluting than just making new stuff), does any one know much about this? I know recycling is better in terms of not using as many resources both renewable and non-renewable, and I personally would rather we had less land devoted to landfills and pulp forest. Really the very best option is to avoid trash at all, but really our society isn't set up for that yet. I'd like to be more informed about the pollution cost of my "green" habits, if any one has any thoughts it'd be much appreciated.

engineergirl and luz I really agree, it is so frustrating that businesses aren't required to do any of that, I wonder how many boxes and pounds of paper, plastic and compostable food stuff just goes in our landfills every day just in business waste.

i have a friend who says she doesn't recycle because "all trash gets sorted anyway" ...that before it hits the landfill, there's a team of folks who sort through all garbage (kitchen scraps and used tissues included) for recycleables!

i tried to tell her that's not how it works, but she was adamant. she started making ME feel like i had it wrong!

anyone have a link to "where my garbage goes?" or something like that?

Where your garbage goes depends on who handles it. I'm extremely skeptical that any city sorts garbage to find recyclables, though. I think your friends is confusing the cities that just let you dump anything remotely recyclable in the blue bin and then have personnel sort through that to get what they actually intend to recycle.

Erinhc, recycling certainly has a cost in pollutants, but whether it's more or less polluting than manufacturing from virgin materials depends on what's being recycled. Sometimes cities refuse to take certain items (colored glass used to be one but may not be any more) because recycling that material is more resource-intensive than using virgin materials. This is a big issue with plastics -- some plastics are potentially recyclable, but it's so expensive and resource-intensive, for such a low-grade material with few uses, that on balance that may not be the best idea for the environment. That would strike me as an argument for encouraging manufacturers to find alternatives to using those plastics in the first place.

thanks wende

I just moved from Oregon to Omaha, NE. Now I wan't the best at recycling in Oregon, but I have to admit, they made it easy. There were recycling containers almost as often as there were garbage cans. I asked our at our new apartment what you do with soda cans and newspapers here and after a blank confused stare got 'throw it in the garbage?' as if oh I should have known. Now I feel guilty whenever I put a can or a paper into the garbage but I just don't know what else to do.