recycle

Well, there've been some things that I've been wanting to do for about a year now. I've just been lolly~gagging around and haven't gotten to them. One of those things was to set up some recycle bins here. There were definitely enough tubs/boxes/garbage~cans and things around to use as the receptacles for newspapers, plastics, cans, paper, and such. I just hadn't gotten around to clearing out an area and rearranging the space to do it.

I finally did it! I went online, to Starkville Recycles, to check out what they take and how they take it. I am disappointed that they don't take glass, but we don't usually dispose of very much glass anyway and we may find some purpose for it in the future. If we don't, there are other recycles programs that if we do stockpile our disposable glass, we can probably take it to another town to use that location's glass services {like Columbus, when Jerry goes over to the military base}.

Starkville Recycles does take almost everything else tho. So I visited their physical facilities on the edge of town, and checked out how to go about dropping off items. And I managed to talk with some one who works there cuz I needed a few questions answered.

Last week, Jerry and I decided to look around for a can~crusher. We want one that we can use for soup cans and other food cans in addition to beverage cans {twelve and sixteen ounce}. Jerry'd asked at work and one person told him {erroneously, as it turns out} that our plant wouldn't take crushed cans. We couldn't figure that one out so we were going to call Starkville Recycles to find out.

When I went online to get the number off their site, I was in for a surprise. The website had disappeared! In its place was a generic site that was not related what so ever to any one particular thing, let alone Starkville Recycling!

This made Jerry and I pause and wonder whether our plant went out of business and was no longer operational. Jerry asked around at work {MSU} and one person told him that they weren't around any more. So I decided to check with the actual facility after I picked Jerry up from work one day.

We were able to speak with an employee who said, yes, they are still doing their thing. No, sorry about the glass. And we don't care what shape your cans are in, squish them if you want, or leave them as cylinders, it matters not to us.

So that night, I scrubbed out the dog dishes and moved them from the room the deep~freezer is in to an area next to the fridge in the kitchen. I broke down and put away the dog cage we haven't used for about six months. And moved the huge wooden trash~can {it actually says "trash" on the lid} out of the deep~freezer's room which is attached to the kitchen.

The following day, I scrubbed that floor. In just the year {eek, it's been that long?!?!} since I last scrubbed it, the floor had become positively gross and disgusting. I swept it, did a rough spot cleaning, wiped it done and disposed of the used sponge/scrubby...and that was before I scrubbed it on hands and knees with a scrub brush, using a bleach based solution. That floor was clean to the nth degree when I was done. That won't last for long, I'm sure.

That done, I moved in the containers Jerry and I decided on. The other day, we sat down and looked at our consumption habits. We knew that we do use lots of cardboard, most shelf food items we use are either boxed, bagged, or canned. Some stuff comes in aluminum pouches. It turns out that we use a ton of mixed paper items, food wrappers, magazines, junk mail, ya know all that glossy stuff.

And now, we have everything labeled so that when we go to dispose of anything, we have tubs for cardboard and mixed paper, boxes for newpapers and office paper {which includes most mail, bills, letters, copier paper: we'd normally shred those documents, but for the time being we can't because I seem to have misplaced our shredder}, and that wooden "trash" can I mentioned earlier? It's for all the metal, aluminum, tin, etc that we go thru.

Our actual trash can is lil, and I've taped a note to it that says: *STOP* Can this item be recycled? Composted?

I think it will take a lil effort for us all to get used to using these containers. But it reminds me of being a kid in PA and we recycled. There was no sorting after you threw things out, you sorted at the point of consumption. You finished a can of soda {emphatically not "pop"}, you rinsed it out, crushed the can, and tossed it with the other cans in the bin.

It feels good. It took a few hours to clean and set things up. But that's the hardest part, and it's done.

Last year, Jerry's eldest child and her family were composting. For awhile we also saved our banana peels and such and then would send the ice~cream tub over and when we got it back, we'd rinse it and reuse it for the next batch of onion skins and radish roots. But I think we stopped or they stopped or whatnot.

I didn't really think much about it til earlier this month, My Jerry asked for some scrambled eggs. I stared at the shells thinking, dude, this would be cool to chuck into the pines. So, along with the recycle bins, we now have a compost pail. We might not have an actual pile set up at this time, but til we do, we can toss some here and there thru~out the land behind the house and ponds. Besides, a nice stroll every other day or so would be a good thing.

So I feel better about finally getting those things done, so that I don't feel so bad about throwing so much away. Everything has lids, so we don't need to worry about the tiniest smidgeon of food drawing bugs {shudder} or creating decaying smells that might make me regret doing such a "good" deed!