recycle more

If you recycle one aluminum can, the energy saved by recycling it can power a television for 3 hours.

With as many cans as I have recycled recently, I think I am saving enough to power my television 50% of the time. Since everyone here is on a different schedule, the T.V. is on almost all the time, so it is a huge help recycling. I hope to start recycling steel cans soon. I really want to recycle everything that I can and stop buying things that I can’t recycle. I really want to be a recycling nut!

So, I have been keeping up with the recycling for about 3 months now and it really feels great! I am hoping to have the money for some recycling bins soon. That will help me keep the recycling more organized. Maybe then my dad won’t throw a hissy fit every time that I don’t take a special trip to the recycling dumpsters to drop it all off. I still feel like taking a special trip to the dumpsters to drop off the recycling is contradictory to what I am trying to accomplish by recycling. OH well. He will get over it.

Right now, I am recycling all of the aluminum cans, cardboard, paper and glass that I can. Steel cans will be recycled when I have recycling bins.

Yay for recycling!

O.k., so my husband and I have been taking the recycling to the recycling dumpsters once every week when we have a full load and when we come home, we don’t always take the time to sit out new containers for recycling. We normally put everything in paper bags that we get at the grocery store (one bag for each type of recycling until we get actual plastic containers for the recycling) and if we don’t put them out before we leave to drop all the recycling off, my dad will just throw away a ton of recyclable stuff because he doesn’t want to take the time to open a paper sack. So, I have to go digging aluminum cans out of the trash can, which is gross. I do it because I care though, and it makes me feel good to recycle as much as I do.

I want to eventually recycle 50% of the things we throw out. If I am looking to buy a product, I am going to buy one in a container that I can recycle around here. If I can skip buying something Styrofoam, I am going to. I am going to try to recycle as much as possible. It would be nice to recycle 100% of our trash, but I don’t know if it can be done now. There is too much stuff out there that comes in things we buy that just can’t be recycled.

Oh, and I am pretty sure that as soon as I am not around as much, my dad is going to go back to his non-recycling ways. I don’t know what I can do to change his mind. I asked him if he could drop off the recycling once in a while since he goes to the store that the recycling dumpsters are near almost every day or every other day, but he said he doesn’t want to deal with it. Then he gets upset if we don’t take the recycling to the dumpsters for a few days. If we don’t need to drive somewhere, we don’t. Driving when we don’t need to be kind of cancels out our recycling. But, he doesn’t care. He likes to be the director of everything going on around him. OH well.

I have a ton of stuff I need to drop off at the Recycling Dumpsters today. A bunch of plastic, aluminum, cardboard and one glass bottle. I am going to try and pick up some tall trash cans to put in the house to separate my recycling so it doesn’t look so cluttered.

On a side note, my dad was trying to tell me that recycling wasn’t as important as I make it. He doesn’t think that it should come first over keeping the house clean. My argument was that recycling doesn’t take a ton of time so it is really easy for it to come first. He thinks that if we put recycling first, the house will become an infested cesspool of disease and filth. Thats my dad for you. But, he isn’t going to squelch my efforts.

...while cleaning the garage. We had a bunch of cardboard boxes that needed to be gotten rid of so instead of just taking them to the dump or putting them in the trash, we recycled them! I love knowing that I helped the earth just a little right there.

And I learned an interesting fact the other day. For every aluminum can we recycle, the energy saved from recycling it can power a t.v. for 3 hours. Fun fact of the day!

...and recycling is the first step!