Greener

I think I have mentioned that I LOVE recycling. It makes me feel all virtuous, I know I am doing a little bit for the earth and future generations, and I get a ginormous small thrill kick out of greatly reducing the amount of garbage I send to the landfill.

When I lived in Illinois, recycling was easy. The city gave me a huge (bigger than the allowed garbage can size) bin on wheels. I parked it in the garage just outside the kitchen door, where it was convenient to chuck all my recyclables, unsorted, into it. At the end of the week, I just rolled that behemoth to the end of the driveway. Easy-peasy. Loved it.

Recycling is not so simple here in Lincoln. I live in an apartment complex, so curb-side recycling is out. The complex doesn't pay for recycling pick up, so there are no recycling bins of any kind. The city does have a recycling program and there are many drop-off sites. They don't make it easy even then - everything has to be separated: cardboard from newspaper from "miscellaneous household paper", glass from plastic from aluminum. Perhaps I was spoiled in Illinois but this degree of separation seems likely to discourage people from recycling. "I not only have to cart my recycling away from my house myself, I have to divide it into 17,000 different categories?"

Being inclined to laziness, I initially resigned myself to not recycling. I couldn't imagine lugging those hard, blue containers out to my car each week, not to mention trying to find a place to keep them in the apartment. But the volume of my garbage is so much more than it was when I was recycling - in Illinois, I usually had one bag of garbage each week and often that bag wasn't completely full; here, I have been taking a stuffed-full bag of garbage to the dumpster about twice a week. Not cool. And it causes me severe mental pain each time I put a cereal box or soda bottle in the garbage can.

So. I am going to give remote recycling a go. When I get a job and feel comfortable spending money on things that are not absolutely essential, I am going to buy a set (or two, considering the sorting) of these:Aren't they cute? I think they will be very convenient to lug down the stairs, stow in the trunk, and tip into the bins at the drop-off site (which is, luckily, just a couple of blocks away). In the meantime, I will use my reusable grocery bags. I'm feeling better already. I am doing something small to make the world a better place...and also selfishly satisfying myself.

Green is good.