A few weeks ago, Enviro Girl posted about the trash collection in her town and how recycling is getting short shrift. Since then, she has talked to town board members and learned the following:
1. Money is earmarked for recycling bins of comparable size to the garbage bins provided for each household in their town.
2. The town is waiting to order the recycling bins with another community so that it costs less. As with many things, the bigger the order, the less per bin the town will pay, and they can share shipping costs with another community, too. So the interminable wait for recycling bins will save taxpayers money–a significant amount.
3. The town’s garbage bins that each household received last year are “recycled.” They are another town’s garbage bins that our town bought for half the price of new bins. Kind of weird to think of a garbage bin being “recycled” but there you go.
Enviro Girl has written her town board members commending them for having recycling bins coming to their community and urging them to make this happen sooner, not later. Until those bins show up, she’s making do with an old metal trash can she formerly used for feed corn to hold her recycling on the curb. It’s less likely to get run over and torn apart than a plastic bin–she appropriated an empty plastic container for the feed corn. The plastic container will keep mice out of the feed corn and won’t get run over or suffer any other damages in her garage.
She’s also writing an editorial for the local paper to encourage residents to recycle more and trash less into landfills while they wait for their recycling bins to arrive. Yesterday she pushed her garbage bin up her quarter-mile driveway–it had been over a month since she’d last done so. At last it was full and the trip was worth the effort. She hopes to see the day when her neighbors are throwing things away at a similar pace as her family.
Reader, can you think of any other action Enviro Girl can take in the meantime? How are you reducing trash at your house?
I think you’ve pretty much covered everything. The only other thing that comes to mind is getting other people to write your town council too, so as to apply a little more pressure on them.
We are reusing stuff like never before, even baggies, foil and kitchen necessities.
My favorite way to reduce garbage? compost, of course. Cutting out paper towels and paper napkins helps a lot, too.
Cloth napkins are lovely! Read what David Lebovitz wrote about how the French re-use their napkins. We use them at home. So much nicer than paper.
And yes, ziplocks can be rinsed and re-used many times, as can tinfoil.
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2010/02/french_napkins.html