We’ve been having an amazing time on our West coast road trip. Even Toddler L and Baby S have been enjoying themselves. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I’ve also been enjoying the time away from the computer. A week without internet has been great for the whole family. But I miss all of you.
Just so you don’t miss me too much here’s a re-post from January. A little look into my life. I hope you enjoy, I’ll be back soon.
Recycling should be second nature by now. Unfortunately not every city, town or landlord agrees with that yet. We are lucky enough to have a nice big trash bin right down stairs for all of our refuse. I even went so far as to ask about recycling before we signed the lease. “Don’t worry, they separate it” I was told. Perhaps it was my desire to get settled, move forward, make a decision, whatever, but I bought that line. It wasn’t until after we had moved in that it started to niggle at me as slightly unbelievable. But being the trusting soul I am I kept playing along. I was even so nice as to separate out the recycling items from our regular trash so those hardworking garbage plant workers wouldn’t have to open the bags and dig through our dirty tissues and food scraps for the empty cans. After my year of trying to be good about reusable bags I decided enough’s enough. I wasn’t buying the line anymore and something had to be done. I was ready to do more and it started at home. Unfortunately, the other tenants in my building aren’t so environmentally guilt-ridden as I so a mass protest to the management was out. That left me to figure out my own solution.
A quick internet search and I was able to find my local recycling collection center. Walser’s to the rescue. I wasn’t looking for my 5 cents per bottle, I just wanted to know my stuff was actually getting recycled.
off to recycle my waste
So I loaded up the car. This was actually two weeks worth as I didn’t make it over last week.
- bye bye recyclables
All I had to do was unload my bags and I was on my way. Except I waited to see the staff check to make sure I had properly sorted my items. And I got a tour! I was so excited to be dropping off my recycling and here I was going to get an inside look into where it all goes? Hot diggity. I wanted in!
- mixed paper
I wanted to see where all my paper cereal boxes and tissue cartons were going to go.
- plastics
And how about piling all my plastic bottles and containers into this big puppy.
- e-waste
Take a look at all the computers they had stacked up ready to ship out. They go through tons of these. Literally. In fact, just last week, in one day they got 44 televisions. And they’re considered a small operation! I’m just glad they’re big enough to take my junk. All gone. Gone to become someone else’s headache.
- metals/appliances (yep that’s a full refrigerator getting the proper heave-ho)
Did you know that so much of what we recycle here in the U.S. actually gets shipped to CHINA for recycling. That’s right. They put it in big containers and ship it to factories in China to do whatever it is recycling plants do. But the factories in China don’t have the same labour laws, works standards or emissions controls that we do. So in the end, how much is it costing the environment for us to recycle? But not Walser’s! They make sure all of their e-waste, metal, paper and plastic is all regurgitated right here at home. Well someone else’s home. I just got it out of my home. But you know what I mean.
I’ll see you next week Walser’s!
compact by design 