I am a little behind on the greening of my life. It is something I passionately care about, yet I find laziness gets in my way sometimes. I use my own cloth bags at stores about 50% of the time, I try to use eco friendly products, I am a vegetarian, which I believe is good for my health, the environment (it helps prevent pollution and waste of natural resources), and simply because I can't eat something that was once living, thinking, and feeling. But recycling has always been my achilles heel.
Last summer I decided that was going to be my summer project- Billy and I were going to start recycling. I bought bins to put the stuff in, and figured it would be easy, since the pound is right across the parking lot from the recycling center. I am there at least twice a week anyway, how hard could it be to make a drop off? Plenty hard for me, apparently. I started putting the stuff in the bins, and then let it sit there, full. Thank goodness the totes had lids! I didn't even start out recycling everything - just glass and plastic, thinking this would make it easier. It didn't.
So, this summer I made up my mind that I was absolutely going to do this - plus I still had all those empty wine bottles in my basement, and it was making me feel a bit like a closet alcholic to look at them. My mom even asked me once how much I drank, after she saw them. I told her they were collected over months, which they were. Nevertheless, I still felt my liver shrivel everytime I saw the box of bottles. They needed to go.
So I made four trips to my car - three with boxes of wine bottles, and one with plastic stuff. I was really hoping that my neighbors weren't watching! I felt so proud throwing my leftover garbage into the big recycling dumpsters, like I was really doing my part in helping to save the planet. I also could not get over all the bottles, magazines, mugs, plastic, and newspapers inside the dumpsters! I kept sticking my head into them all and exclaiming to Billy to look at all of it! I was absolutely fascinated by the piles. I am definitely going to start recycling more often.
Hopefully, though, I will make my second trip a little sooner than next summer.
We started recycling when Brownstown introduced their curbside program. After the first week, we were astounded by the amount of cans, bottles, plastic and paper that we normally would have just tossed in the trash that was now overflowing in our recycling bin. I get a little twinge of pride now when Jenna will come to me with a piece of cardboard and say, "This is recyclable, right Mom?" and then head off to put it in the bin.
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