OT: do you recycle?

jheller spun a FINE 'yarn':

jheller. . .

Can't get your url to open, but wanted to respond, I was 'green' long before it became popular again (now is the third 'round' of it), I was green in the 60's! I recycle just about everything except my DH and kidlets. :D Noreen

We use fabric bags for shopping (there is no choice between paper and plastic here - you get plastic or you bring your own bags).

What frustrates me is that much of what is locally "recycled" by placing in appropriate bins for collection is shipped to China where it is burnt - not exactly an environmentally friendly solution! The local council thinks this is just fine because the rubbish doesn't go into our landfills (never mind the toxic fumes produced by burning it in someone else's backyard).

VP

Here's the original URL for the story

we recycle AND re-use here at our place. We live in a rural area andhave to cart our own garbage to the landfill. We usually do this 3 or 4times a year. Since they set up the recycling at our landfill, we havemanaged to take more bags for recycling than bags that go in the landfillcell. Here's what we can recycle at the landfill (and I may have forgottensomething): Tin cans Glass bottles Plastic drink/juice bottles [no margarine tubs ;>( ] Newspapers Oil and oil filters (DH does our oil changes) Batteries, tires, paint and paint cans

We don't have the choice of paper or plastic at our grocery stores, so I save up the plastic bags I don't use for garbage and return them to the store to their recycling bin. I also save up the many annoying catalogues sent out by Sears and a couple of times a year I cart them to a Sears store in the city. The only reason I don't cancel the delivery of the catalogues is because once in a while I buy something from them. I've written them a few times requesting that they send out fewer in a year. I guess I'm talking to the wall.

I live in a mobile home with absolutely NO storage available to me, so the recycle bags hang in my tiny laundry room, making it very difficult to load and unload the machines (smile). Anything burnable goes in the burning barrel. (nothing toxic - just private papers and the like).

I found out recently that the recyclable plastic goes to a local firm where they make fenceposts from it. The tires are shredded and used in road construction. We also have a fellow in the area who just got approval for a rammed earth home, where the earth is put inside the tires and used to make the walls.

Shelagh

Recycling is a big thing in the UK now.

I've always recycled what I can. Having been born during WWII when food, clothing and household items were rationed, and most time you couldn't get anything replaced anyway, we were taught to recycle as children. Mary Fisher would have a few tales to tell on this front as well!

I take my own bags to the shops but occasionally a shop bag is needed and here you don't get the choice - it is plastic or nothing! I found a site which gives a pattern for how to crochet your own shopping bag from the bags that shops give away.

are extremely hard wearing and look quite trendy too.

Same here.

It was second nature during the war, you didn't waste and you re-used everything possible. We carried on doing it all our lives, it makes sense.

It's also fashionable now to have roof and wall insulation and solar power. We had roof insulation from the early 60s when we moved here, cavity wall insulation for ten or more years and we now have solar water heating.

Mary

Mary

Heh, I chuckled when I read that last paragraph. With the winters we have on the prairies here in Canada, we'd have a tough time without well insulated roofs and walls. And never mind 2x4 studs. Here they've been

2x6's for years, to accomodate thicker layers of insulation. The builders here are even using "wall wrap" such as Tyvek. I can't say I'm really convinced about the Tyvek, but others are.

Shelagh

Skin tents?

I use a lot of Tyvek - in sending goods which would pierce paper envelopes :-)

Mary

Another pattern for those who want to make their own shopping bags:

Yes -- I remember taking off both ends of the cans food came in, putting them in the resulting cylinder and stomping on them on the concrete porch floor. I got to help stomp (though I'm not sure my weight was enough to finish the job in those days - not a problem now.) I tagged along with my big sister on paper drives. We even peeled the tinfoil off gum wrappers.

Now we have recycle bins and pick up for all paper waste, cans, glass and plastic bottles, and yard waste. We are encouraged to compost vegetable waste as well. I make doll clothes out of remnants and the good parts of old clothes and also, of course, out of odds and ends of yarn. (My youngest grand daughter has a new doll she named Lemon Pie that seems need quite a few clothes)

Excellent subject... and so very important too! My son jokingly calls me a "tree hugger" and tells me I am reverting back to the hippie days, but he knows how important it is too. ;o)

We definitely recycle here, we've been doing it for years. We have a "Blue Box" for recycle pickup once a week that we put out beside the garbage bags. We are charged $2.00 for each garbage bag put out to try to stop people from throwing away too much, and I can't believe how many people still put one tiny grocery bag out each week instead of loading up a large garbage bag to put out every two to three weeks (depending on what we have to throw away).

Meanwhile in our "Blue Box" for recycling we are allowed to put.. Tin cans Glass bottles Plastic drink/juice bottles Margarine tubs Tinfoil wrap and tinfoil containers (such as TV dinners, Frozen Lasagna pans, etc)

We put newspapers in bags to keep them all together instead of blowing around the streets, and put them in or beside the Blue Boxes, we do the same thing with any plastic bags that we will not be using to put wet garbage in before putting it into large garbage bags. We also flatten cardboard and put it into another cardboard box and tie it to keep it together and set it beside the Blue Boxes.

The grogery stores I prefer to shop at offer plastic grocery bags, or cardboard boxes. If we are just buying a couple of items we don't bother with either... but if we are doing a large grocery run, we use cardboard boxes or just bring along some of our own plastic bags from home.

Magazines that have run their course with us, are recycled by bringing them to hospital/dentist/doctor waiting rooms, or to the laundromat for others to enjoy.

I miss the days of paper grocery bags... my Dad used to undo the seams, turn them inside out and use them to wrap parcels being sent to my sister or brother for Christmas, etc. And of course, you could always use them as craft paper for kids to draw and colour on.

I really love the smell of a bonfire, but because it is not good for the environment we only do it maybe once a year when we have a few people here and want to sit around outside in the evening without being eaten alive by mosquitoes. In the bonfire we burn only old branches that have fallen from our trees during winter, and private papers that is safer (security-wise) to burn than to throw away in the garbage... like bills, etc.

There is a place in a nearby community that apparently makes padding for under school playground equipment from old rubber. I thought that was pretty neat. I have never been there, but I would hope that they have some sort of filtering system for when they are melting the rubber so the fumes don't go out into the air.

*hugs* Gemini

Murielle

Funny that, our sons call us aged hippies - they say that we were hippies first time round. I can't remember being a hippy!

We've just been to a mediaeval event in Kent. The organisers gave us a large bin liner for rubbish. I handed it in at the end and the knot took up more room than our waste! I think there was a fruit juice box and some bits of cling film, the waste of three days. We generate very little rubbish but most people had full bags and sometimes two.

...

Same here - and some of them have been 'rescued' from waiting rooms :-)

We rarely have a bonfire, branches are shredded if they're small enough and put back on the garden, larger branches are used to make small things. Spouse takes great pleasure in hand shredding what he considers to be sensitive paper, I'm more casual about it. Paper shreddings are put in the compost bin.

I wish more people were as conscientious as you!

Mary

I was a *very* young hippie near the end of the hippie run... but I do and will always love their peaceful and environmentally conscientious ways. :o)

Yes, it's unbelievable how some people can come up with so much garbage in such a short amount of time, isn't it? Then you have others (like some people who live in areas around here) who put a tiny amount out for pickup instead of waiting until the bag is actually full. I normally try to flatten as much as I can to make more room so that the garbage bag to go out is totally full.

Oh me too... if I spot something of interest (a recipe, pattern, or whatever) I rescue the magazine to my home for however long it takes for me to get what I wanted from it... then it goes on to a new home. ;o)

I'm relatively certain that any branches in our yard will be put to a different use this coming winter. Matthew (my son) has been working on organizing the garage/workshop (I seriously have to stop calling it a garage as it's never once been used for the van) so he can do more woodworking out there... and since there is a woodburning stove in there to keep it heated, I'm sure he will hoard up all the branches (and private papers) to dry out and burn in there. He'll also be tossing in small bits of leftover wood from whatever project he will be working on, so nothing will go to waste.

Thank you, Mary! :o) All we can do is try to teach the younger generations and hope they will listen before it's too late for the environment.

*hugs* Gemini

Oh I was very much in sympathy with their ethos but Spouse wasn't, in those days. He didn't seem to realise that although we were legally married and lived in our own house we shared many of their lifestyles.

We have bins which are emptied automatically, it's easier for the crew if the bins from adjoining houses can be taken together rather than just have one - the wagon is geared for that.

Oh good! I shan't feel as guilty about it in future :-)

Same with ours - nor is there room under the (long) carport for the car ...

Excellent!

I agree 100% :-)

Mary