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.
