Here's the tally from today. I finally broke holes in both dishwashing gloves. And they're not made of recyclable materials. But they make dishwashing so.... much... better! Let me know if you have a better, more sustainable idea. I go through three or four pairs a year.
Advanced Placement Recycling
About a month ago, some friends told us about a place in Portland called Far West Fibers that will accept more items than curbside pickup. We were thrilled (yes, we get thrilled about these kinds of things) and started collecting.
I took my first trip to this recycling center today, a mere mile away! They took about 3/4 of the three grocery bags of trash I had collected over the last month. 'Crinkly' plastic (makes a crinkly sound when you move it) was my most rejected item, joining me on the ride back home to go in the landfill pile (though I'm not counting it in the daily tally since it represents a whole month of crinkly plastic).
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| Sigh. Chip bags, cereal bags, etc. = not recyclable |
They also don't take packing peanuts which is disappointing because I just don't know what to do with those things now. They seem like the type of trash that's just itching to fly off the landfill truck and head for the ocean to kill some seals... or cats.
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| Bad kitties! |
However, I happily recycled piles of stretchy plastic food packaging, plastic grocery bags, bubble wrap, shrink wrap, and more. As well as whole pieces of Styrofoam and some harder 'rigid' plastic that curbside won't take, like all those lids to plastic food tubs.
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| Watching a guy haul this really nasty dog crate to the recycling center warmed my heart! |
So, Who Does AP Recycling?
Perhaps the most enlightening and interesting part of this excursion today was to see who else was at the recycling center. Call me out for stereotyping but I pictured a bunch of environmentalist tree hugging hippie types. I can say this without being judgmental because it's probably the category most people put me in...
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| Peace! |
But they weren't what I expected. My sample size (6-7 people) isn't very significant for the whole 10 minutes I was there but it still makes for intriguing quasi-data: None of them were my age - mostly in their 40s and 50s. All white except for one Hispanic couple. Women and men. Normal looking, regular people. I asked three of them how they knew about this place and here were the answers:
"I took a Master Recycling class." (This is an eight-week course offered by the City of Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.)
"I live out in the country now and they don't provide us with recycling services." (Coming from a household of six, she visits Far West Fibers about once a month with three huge trash buckets packed in the back of her van, full of recyclable materials.)
"My family has always come here. My uncle's a cop and he's always been into recycling."
None of these people have to do this. None of them are benefiting from this effort in a direct way. They were all very matter-of-fact about it - it's just what they do. Awesome! I love it. Oh, and now I can be judged for my stereotype that 'normal' people wouldn't do this.
Come back tomorrow for an excursion to... the grocery store!
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