recycle some of the plastic my city won't take

I admire what MaryHawkins has been doing. I have something slightly different in mind, though, but this goal was the closest I could find to my thoughts, plus I like seeing what Mary has been doing.

Anyway. For one thing, I want to be more consistent about recycling plastic bags. I reuse them for groceries (along with my cloth bags) pretty consistently, but when they fall apart or when I collect too many I want to do better at recycling them regularly at the grocery store so that they don’t pile up.

Second, I want to write to my Village administration about the sad excuse for a recycling program we have. They pick up recycling only once per month, which isn’t nearly enough if you’re really recycling everything possible. Plus they don’t recycle as much as any of the nearby towns and villages, which doesn’t make sense. I want to write to them and see what they say, and then maybe I’ll sic my kids on them.

to the Park Slope Food Co-op today to drop off my plastic. I rarely decide that something related to recycling isn’t worth it, but I don’t think this one is for me. When I finally went through the big box where I’d been keeping my gleanings, most of the plastic there was plastic #6, which is unrecyclable. I had to throw it all out, so I was left with a small tote bag of plastic even though I’d been saving since November. In addition, it was tough for me to get out there at the times when they have recycling. They’re only open 6 hours a month, and it was an hour and a half long errand for me, round trip. On the way back, I realised that I could have done better by bringing my own tupperware to use at the deli for lunch and when I bring leftovers home from dinner.

I did see that they collect bubble wrap, so I may pay another visit to them after we move. I know that last time he moved, my boyfriend had a good-sized roll of bubble wrap left over. I also hoard the stuff in my kitchen. For something like that, I’d consider going back, but I’m not going to make a habit of collecting plastic for it.

The only things left in my bonus points recycling box are old shoes. Apparently Niketown will take old shoes and recycle them. Mine have metal bits that I have to dig out, but I have three pairs of hole-y shoes sitting in my bin. Those go out next!

On Sunday I took a look at my box of recycling delights and I rounded up all of my old toothbrushes and used the free mailer to send them off to Recycline. I go through toothbrushes like mad, so I had five of them since I switched to the recyclable kind.

I also found out that on Mondays, Goodwill is at the Greenmarket and they take clothes to recycle into rags. I need to go through my closet anyway, so this is a good thing to do with the clothes that aren’t good enough to go to charity…

I recently learned that the Park Slope Food Coop takes plastics that the city won’t recycle, and I really want to drop by with some of the things I’ve been hoarding. I’ve been taking extra deli containers home after lunch and trying to reuse them, but I really have too many.

Here’s the info:

Bring clean, dry plastic to the Coop’s sidewalk during monthly recycling hours. We close up promptly. So, the final drop offs will be accepted 10 minutes prior to our end time to allow for sorting:

2nd Sat., 10 AM-2 PM
3rd Thur., 7 PM-9 PM
Last Sun., 10 AM-2 PM

We accept…

• #1 & # 2 (where mouth is wide or wider than the body, meaning NOT bottles) plastics
• #4 plastics
• #5 plastic tubs, cups & specifically marked lids and caps (discard any with paper labels)
• Plastic film