I can't tell you how ridiculously thrilled I was when I found out that our new home was in a community that had mandatory recycling! Recycling has been my goal ever since I was about 11 or 12 years old, but in most of the communities that I lived in, I was a child before my time. In fact, I lived in the age when there wasn't even a deposit charged on a soda (pop) bottle. Now this is truly unique if you consider that when both my father and my children were kids, there was a deposit required on a bottle of soda(pop). I was the generation of children that grew up without this fundraising option!
In fact, when my family moved to a much more rural and farm-like area, I was looked at with scorn, and as if I was crazy when I asked them about recycling. "There's plenty of room at the dump." Bobby replied to my question with a look that said "what can you expect except dumb from a city slicker," and I hadn't lived any where near the city!
So, here I am, living in recycle USA and I'm still not happy! As Ricky Ricardo from "I Love Lucy" would say, "Wot hoppened?" When we first moved in, we always had more recycling than what the town gave us a container for. Before the town got their fancy shmanzy armed trucks for collecting the recycling, this wasn't a problem. Have more than what the container has room for? Not a problem, put the extra into cardboard boxes or into a plastic garbage can and put it at the curb with everything else. The men manually loaded it onto the collection truck. Home relatively clear to start the cycle all over again.
And then it happened, the Town decided to do single stream recycling, and humans would no longer load or recyclables onto the truck; a truck would do it.
They even gave each resident a nice, big, tan colored can that worked with the trucks lifting arm.
And what should be even more good news to me, the Town would be collecting even more recyclable categories, so there would be even less garbage! Though now, with the bigger recyclables can, the recyclables will only be picked up twice a month, instead of every week. Not good news for us.
Because now we are immersed in recyclables! We can no longer use cardboard boxes or trash cans for the overflow, because the truck arm can not pick those up.
So I called Town Hall, and they gave me a number to call, and eventually I will be able to get a recyclables pick up truck to come every time our recyclables can is filled.
It just hasn't happened yet. What has happened though, is the constantly staring at all this mess in my kitchen, in my hallway and on my back porch is making me change my mind on recycling.
But, that's another blog.
To be continued..........
