Monday, June 2, 2014

A Year of Kindness - Challenge Week 22

I hope you found a few extra opportunities last week to say "thank you". I had so much fun creating a blog post for the sole purpose of saying thank you to everyone who made me feel so special on my birthday!

I'm approaching this Kindness Project a little differently for the month of June - while it is getting warmer here in the Northern Hemisphere, but before it gets too hot to even be outside - and before it gets too cold in the Southern Hemisphere - I want to devote the entire month to acts of kindness toward Mother Earth. Call me a tree hugger if you want, I'm okay with it!

This week's challenge - RECYCLE!

In our home, all of our trash is separated. Easily ground food stuffs go in the garbage disposal. If I were more committed, we would have a compost pile somewhere for all those banana peels and apple cores! Paper (including newspapers, magazines, receipts, junk mail, mail, school papers, etc.) and plastics (water bottles, processed food containers, packaging, detergent bottles, etc.) and metals (tin foil, cans, etc.) are each separated out and taken weekly to our recycling center. We watch for the annual electronics and hazardous recycling events and that is when we dispose of old computers, televisions, batteries, etc.  We look for every opportunity to limit the amount of trash we put out for collection each week and to responsibly dispose of items at the end of their life cycle. I'd like to think that by doing this, and by purchasing products made from recycled goods, we are doing our little bit to help to save our forests, our air quality, and our land from becoming one massive toxic land fill.


I know that not all communities make recycling as easy as it is here, but let's talk about it. What is the standard for recycling in your community? Do you regularly recycle items? If so, what? Do you have other ideas about what can be recycled? (Note, I am not talking about Up-cycling which is a subject for another week!).


7 comments:

Melissa said...

We have curbside recycling here - we put all our paper, plastic, glass, and metals in one container that's picked up bi-weekly, making it easy to recycle those things. I use canvas tote bags most of the time when shopping so I'm not bringing home so many plastic bags. We had a compost pile for several years, but I let it go last year when I was feeling so bad.

I have a post about "being green" that I've been working on for a while now, adding little thoughts here and there . . . maybe I'll post it this week to go along with your challenge.

debs14 said...

We have three different types of rubbish bins here and recycling is taken very seriously. If you put the wrong thing in your recycling bins they can refuse to empty them! So all plastic, glass and cardboard goes in one, all food waste in another and anything left after that in the other.

scrappyjacky said...

We are lucky that almost everything we need to recycle is collected from outside the house once a fortnight....including textiles and small electrical items.
All our food waste goes in our compost bin....along with anything else compostable....I even rip up the cardboard toilet roll holders and pop them in!!
We also have a lot of charity bags left on our doorstep and they can be filled with unwanted clothes,shoes,books,toys,CDs etc for the charity to sell in their shop.
We end up with very little rubbish to put out nowadays.

Sian said...

We just this week received a new box from our local council so they can collect glass for recycling along with the other stuff. Recycling is taken a lot more seriously here now than it was when I started taking glass to the bottle bank when we were first married

Maria Ontiveros said...

We have a wonderful recycling program now. One bin for paper, cans, bottles, plastic, etc. It is huge and gets stuffed full each week. Our regular garbage is not down to about 3/4 of a can (used to be two).
The chickens have helped us with recycling, as they love most past-its-prime (but not rotten) produce, as well as produce scraps. Strawberry hulls are their favorite!
Rinda

Karen said...

We have a good recycling program here as well, but nothing to compare to the one my daughter had in Livermore, CA. Spending time with her there encouraged me to be much more conscientious about recycling. There's a new challenge out now to use recycling materials in a papercrafting project.

http://virginiasviewchallenge.blogspot.com/2014/06/virginias-view-challenge-4.html

alexa said...

We have always been into simple living, and recycling - we recycle paper and card, tins and foil, glass, fabric, any food waste (which we try not,to have), garden stuff, tetra-packs, plastic, batteries, printer cartridges ... Our local council is very good.