Do You Recycle?

[Twitch]

Our town has a huge container for recycling where we funnel a surprising amount of stuff. About the only thing I need to take outside is used motor oil. If it weren't for the city bin I'd never be able to trot around with newspapers, cans, glass, metal and plastic.

Just wondering if all your municipalities have recycling programs wherever you are.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Absolutely!!!

 

[NeezusMike]

Yes, we do too.

 

[carebear]

Private companies here mostly. The local markets just aren't there except for a few uses and the cost of shipping to outside markets makes it a low profit game.

Worth the inconvenience though, if only for psychological reasons.

 

[Air Boss]

Sure do. Green garbage goes in the compost pile and othe recycling goes to the curb biweekly and I can put out as many containers as I need to. The "local" recycling site is 14 iles away so it doesn't make sense to drive there. We pay $36/year for recycling. Glass,bi-metal, plastic, and aluminum can be comingled but paper and cardboard must be separated. Our rural township has a big garbage day and they spearate items for recycling then as well. Electronics, tires, metal, etc. all go in separate dumpsters. The price is $5 for a car and $10 for a pickup or van load. Way back in the late 1970's we got into recyclying while stationed in California.

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

My town offers recycling, but our building's garbage room does not have the bins. Many of us seperate out the recyleables and put them in seperate bags outside of the bins provided. But, I'm not sure if the people who take the trash out actually do anything with them. There is no place for us to go in our area to bring such things.

 

[Samsa]

Yep, we have curb-side pick up for bottles/cans/paper every Wednesday.

 

[Air Boss]

Work too

Paper, cardboard, glass, aluminum and plastic bottles. Cleaners will not taek garbage if recyclables are in it.

 

[Lady Day]

I think it s a law in the citay to have recycling avaliable in apt residences. Also I know companies can get fined for not doing it.

Yay green.
LD

 

[Rosie]

We have pick up every Wednesday. Folks have been issued fines for not recycling properly.

 

[Dinerman]

pick up every wednesday. we generate more recycle than trash. It's pretty amazing.

 

[McPeppers]

Wednesdays here aswell. Paper/Cans/Plastics/Bottles

And theres a facility for old Motor-Oils to be recycled into god knows what LOL

 

[Aaron Hats]

No curbside pick up here so we need to bring our trash to the dump/transfer station. Mandatory recycling items are newspapers/magazines, plastic, glass, cardboard, soda/beer cans, tin cans and mixed paper. These all go into separate bins.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our city dump has recycling bins, and a big sign at the front gate spelling out exactly how much recycling has saved the taxpayers over the previous month -- all our waste is shipped to a regional incinerator, and every ton costs money. Recycling cuts that cost way down.

We don't have pickup here -- you have to take in your own trash -- but there are attendants at the dump to make sure you seperate out your recyclables and put them in the right bins.

Maine has had a deposit bottle law for nearly 30 years -- there's a nickel deposit on all soda, beer, juice, and water bottles and cans, and 15 cents on all wine and liquor bottles. So the recycling rate on containers is something like 95 percent here -- and there's a lot of street people who support themselves by bottlepicking.

 

[Baggers]

Our city has a single stream recycling system that picks up twice a month. Every home gets two 70+ gallon containers on wheels, one for trash and one for recyclables. All paper, newsprint, catalogues ad flyers, plastics, glass, and whatever goes in the recycle bin which I wheel out to the alley every 2nd and 4th Wednesday to be collected along with our weekly trash. Works great.

Cheers!

 

[raiderrescuer]

Recycle...

Here we do not get charged for Recycling and the Center is less than a Mile away...pretty convenient !

There recently was an expose on the television though that got me thinking…they are saying it takes more “energy and resources” to recycle the products. I think it’s along the same lines of “it takes 4 litres of water to make 1 litre of Coca-Cola”.

I'll continue to recycle until I get the cold hard facts.

 

[Baggers]

Raiderrescuer, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Just the fuel and manpower involved in picking it up every other week in my city, let alone the costs of running the recycling plant, might negate any positives. First one truck comes by to pick up the trash, then a couple of hours later another truck comes by to pick up the recyclables. Add in the weekly yard waste pickup and the monthly bulk pickup, and that's up to four passes in one week! That's a lot of hydrocarbons being burned. It sounds similar to the report circulating that electric cars actually consume more energy than comparable gasoline vehicles because proponents don't factor in the cost of generating the electricty used to recharge them. Or the cost of recycling the batteries used in hybrids after they're replaced.

But hey, as long as it makes us feel good...

Cheers!

 

[carebear]

Recycling isn't about energy conservation so much as it is about resource conservation. To make recycled paper probably doesn't take much more energy than to start with a tree, maybe less since the preparatory work is now a sunken cost. To compare energy use, to be fair, you really need to go back to extraction costs.

Still, recycling really is more about a mindset than any practical reason. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we're not running out of room for economic landfills in a macro sense and we're not really running out of the resources either. But why turn a nice field into a landfill if we can avoid it efficiently? Why dig up a hill if we can reuse the iron?

As long as the choice to do so is voluntary and based on hard science it's not a bad option. At this point in my life I don't mind spending the extra gas to take my papers, cans and bottles to the collection site.

 

[Air Boss]

Boy Scout Paper Drive

I can remember my Grandfather saving his newspapers (he got at least 3 daily papers) for semi-annual Boy Scout paper drives in the 1960's. I would pull out the "glossy" circulars before tying them in bundles since the Scouts could not use them. The stacks in the basement were incredible.

 

[DancingSweetie]

They make it very easy here to recycle. Along with a garbage can we get a big can for green (grass/leaves tree limbs), and one for everything else - cans bottles, plastic soda bottles, newspapers, cardboard.... and the Folsom prisoners sort the stuff.