OMG! this stuff piles up so fast!

The recycling had mounted up in the kitchen again so I sorted it into all the different plastic bags and added it to the growing pile in the garage. I try and send it home with my daughter who lives in the city or take it there when I'm in town but still it accumulates. This little town recycles plastic bottles, aluminum cans, newspaper, and corrugated cardboard. The other plastics, metal, office paper, cardboard packaging, and glass are thrown out. Unless I bag them up and take them to my daughter's house in the city which does recycle those items. But that's not really fair to her since there are six people in her family and she also recycles and that's a lot of stuff to store til recycling day. Not to mention a lot of stuff to set out. But what else can I do? Since I sold the house in the city last year, I have no place else to take it. And I can't accept just throwing it all away, adding to the already bulging landfills and lost resources.

I don't care for our throw-away culture, the lack of respect it shows towards the planet that we, ironically, need for survival. I have been taking my own bags to the grocery store since sometime after plastic bags became ubiquitous, long before it was the thing, back when the checkers and baggers rolled their eyes at you for doing it. When the newspaper piled up I would take it to the local paper plant that bought paper and they would look at my little truckload and say, lady, that's not enough for us to buy, but they would take it. When a local grocery store chain had locations that would accept aluminum and glass, I would lug it all down there. Plastic bags went to whatever place would take them. I've even taken big bags of styrofoam peanuts back to any box stores that will take them. I was thrilled when the city finally started the curbside recycling program. More and more items were accepted and less and less went in the trash. With a compost pile, we generate about one large size grocery store plastic bag of trash a week with the occasional run to the transfer station for big heavy things. The rest, which is considerable considering the way this country loves to package things, is what can be recycled...if you have access to it.

I'm lucky, I guess, that this little town, whose city government and economic council seem to put roadblocks in front of anything new in a (hopefully doomed to failure) attempt to keep this town from being prosperous and growing, has any recycling at all. But I still don't want to throw all this stuff away.

Maybe I'll just start making midnight forays into the edges of the city on different recycling days and add a little into everyone's bins.