Jenga with recyclables
So the Pumpkin and I recycle. Not as much as we could do, but we make an effort to rinse and flatten containers, disassemble boxes and put the newspapers into a paper bag for easier handling.
Only problem is, both of us are equally lazy with regard to putting the recyclables down into their respective bins in the garage, and then getting the bins to the recycling center when they’re full.
It was so easy and convenient to recycle in Saline. The city provided recycling service along with garbage pickup, and it wasn’t even necessary to sort the recyclables! You just put your appropriately-managed recycling materials in a bin at the curb along with your trash can. If there was something in the bin that wasn’t cleaned properly, or if the materials weren’t all truly recyclable, they’d leave the bin and its contents, along with a big sticky note explaining why you sucked at recycling. Sufficiently chastened, you would never make that mistake again.
Here in Knoxville, we could have that same convenience, but we’d have to pay for it. I hate having to pay for something that I think should be available as a given service, so instead of subscribing to our waste hauler for recyclable pickup, we maintain our own bins and take a trip to the recycling center every so often.
Everybody’s got different ways of handling their recyclables. We used to have a really cool basket which was just the right size for stacking newspapers and other paper in; this basket had a big brother which was the ideal size for about a week’s worth of glass/metal/plastic recyclables. These baskets sat on the kitchen floor by the trash can, and they worked beautifully for us for a long time.
Even though we rinsed everything really thoroughly (don’t worry, we don’t waste a lot of water rinsing recyclables–used dishwater performs this task remarkably well), Belle and the other fuzzies would occasionally dip into the recycling basket and pull out the plastic cap from the half & half bottle, and chew on it.
We didn’t think this was a problem, as our dogs didn’t often go to the recyclable basket to find a new “toy.” But when we discovered Belle had swallowed a chunk of half & half lid that was larger than a quarter in diameter and jagged on the edges, we stopped using the basket. It wasn’t secure, and it was just too big a pain in the pants to put it up out of their reach when we left the house.
‘No problem,’ I thought. ‘We’ll just have to make a daily trip down to the garage with the recycling stuff. It will force us to be more conscious of the recyclables.’ Yeah. No, that’s not what happened.
Instead of taking one or two pieces of plastic down each day, Rick and I fell into the habit of rinsing and squashing the containers, and then leaving them sitting on top of the toaster oven. It’s kind of like playing a sadistic version of Jenga, in which the base is the slightly-uneven top of the toaster oven, and instead of smoothly-machined pieces of tree, the playing pieces are irregularly-shaped and made of lots of different materials.
The challenge begins when every square centimeter of the toaster oven is occupied with a recyclable. Then we must begin to carefully stack squashed two-liter soda bottles and rinsed Castlebury’s chili cans on top of the initial layer. The game continues until it’s no longer possible to add another piece to the pile.
The loser of this game is the one who contributes the ‘toppling piece’, the straw (or gallon milk jug) that breaks the toaster oven’s back. The loser must then gather up all the recyclables and take them to the garage to then be Jenga’d up on the bins down there, a punishment worse than death.
(Didja see that? I just made a word! Or maybe not, because Jenga’s been around for a while. I would imagine lots of families Jenga many things in their everyday lives, from library books to unsorted junk mail to cookware, etc.)
Why is it so hard for us to make a daily trip to the garage to take the recycling down, and then to make the trip to the recycling center every couple weeks? The garage isn’t very far (unless my knees are hurting, then going up & down two flights of stairs makes it seem like it’s miles away), and it’s not a scary or threatening place, unless the recyclables are really out-of-hand–then one might be caught in an avalanche, but it would be an avalanche of plastics, because we put metal and glass in the lower bins. So that threat is disproved quite easily, too.
And yes, now that I’m working on Saturdays, that throws a monkey wrench into the weekly chore schedule. Saturdays used to be our marketing/library/recyclable/housework day, and it just lacks a lot of appeal when there’s only one of us working on that stuff then.
We might have to bring the pretty baskets back up out of the garage; maybe if we can keep the kitchen table cleared off, that will make it easier to put them up while the dogs are unsupervised. Maybe it would even be worth paying the extra money to have our garbage company pick up recycling materials…nah, that’s definitely not the solution.
September 16th, 2011 13:24
Kara I can soooooooo relate!!! I too feel recycling is the least I can do to help save our planet. It is easy and fairly painless, until the Jenga of recyclables falls on your feet :-) I live in the downstairs portion of a 2 story duplex, so the back of the house is enclosed. I keep my recycling on the landing of the steps leading up to my back door so all I have to do is open the kitchen door and throw the recyclables into the appropriate bin. I bought a low shelf and keep the recycling bin for plastic, glass and cans on top of that shelf and 2 cardboard boxes under the shelf – one for paper/cardboard and the other for returnable bottles and cans . I live in Kalamazoo Township, which provides FREE bimonthly recycling pickup. However, I am the only person on my street who recycles so therefore the recycling truck just doesn’t bother to come down my street. I have called the Township on several occassions, concerned that the benefits of recycling are deeply hampered by the recycables blowing out of the containers and ending up in the woods across the street. They have (supposedly) told the driver to please make sure they are picking mine up but that still doesn’t happen. So I decided that I would instead just drop them off at the local recycling center myself as there is not much point in “guilty recycling” when I see my milk jugs hanging from the limbs of trees. But, I have found, dropping the recycling off is a much bigger task than walking the bin to the curb 20 feet from my front porch. I FINALLY made the trip, but I am embarrassed to say that I had 8 MONTHS of recycling :-( I am even more embarrassed to say that I did end up throwing some recyclables away in the process because the bins were so packed full that I could not possibly shove another thing in them. But, the whole point in this was to say that perhaps you could find an area near your front/back door that would be more convenient for the baskets/bins so they can be piled there, away from the dogs and the toaster oven (aaahhhheeeemmmm….weren’t you a Fire Fighter?!?!?!??!) and then moving them from there to the garage, or perhaps even the recycling center? Some where I saw a bin similar to a laundry sorting bin that was about 3 feet tall and divided into 3 sections, on wheels. For some odd reason, I think this belongs(ed) to my sister, but I cannot get her to answer me on Yahoo Chat to confirm this information. I did find several on http://www.allrecyclingbins.com however they seemed a little pricey to me. Wishing you Happy Recycling :-)
September 16th, 2011 17:10
Oh, Ann, I’m so sorry for the delay, but I have to approve all comments–I get a LOT of spam. And I do the same thing! I hate to throw stuff away that is clearly marked as recyclable, but I also have resorted to throwing some stuff away simply because that’s where I have some space left! :::ashamed but grinning:::
And don’t worry about the recyclables on top of the toaster oven–if we’re going to be toasting, we will move the danged recyclables over to the counter or kitchen table. Why wouldn’t we take this opportunity to run them down to the garage, you ask? Well, our garage is verrrrrry far away, and it’s horribly inconvenient (no it’s not. We’re just lazy).
I got our starter set of recycling bins from Harmony catalog, along with a really cool rolling cart that suspends the bins and saves space. We’ve appropriated more bins from other locations (picked one up in the basement of our former apartment house in Oak Ridge, which had been left behind by a former tenant) and I think we’re good for having enough bins. If we had MORE, we’d be able to HOARD MORE RECYCLABLES. So I’ll hold off on buying any for right now.
One point of concern is that some of the original bins have begun to crack, after the extremes of temperature in Michigan and here in Tennessee. The bins themselves are marked as recyclable plastic, but at what point should we quit duct-taping them and consign them to the recycling bin in the sky?
And yeah, I can just hear people bitching about “those damned tree huggers, letting their recyclables blow around and litter up the neighborhood.” Heh!