I do hope that you’re able to get residents to use your recycling service more. After seven years you’d think they would catch on. Keep on banging the drum, and hopefully they, and the city, will. Thanks for doing such heavy lifting over there. Keep it up!

Please let me know who you talked with so they can be properly informed. I’ve been runing the pickup service for going on seven years and wish folks would just remember it is here and if used I will be able to expand.

But a element of integrated recycling that never even dawned on me is the fact that small towns simply don’t have convenient recycling centers. One of the pieces of the puzzle is that each city/county/state etc has their own rules/unions/monopolies/zones within a city about who the haulers are and then each of those haulers have a different process for recycling (even down to do they mix recycling and separate at the plant or what?)

I do agree that we need direction from the top….but the challenges at the local level are sometimes boggling. What really seems to have the impact is our choices as consumers and voting with our dollars. I know this is a bad analogy but it’s sort of like the worlds oldest profession (if no ones buys it it won’t get sold)….I’m just sayin’.

There are a whole bunch of these Potato utensils poping up, they are potato starch based and they only take a half year to break down. Our cafe uses them now but since I mostly bring my own lunch I just use real cutlery and wash it once in a while :O

//A

I agree about a website drop-off locations. Sounds like a need that should be filled. I’ll get Jim on that!

Thanks for writing.

The trend I’ve noticed is that bigger cities and communities tend to recycle better, due in part to the fact that it’s often too costly for small towns. Some rural folks drive miles and miles to recycle, but most people just don’t bother.

One pet peeve of ours is RV parks located in recycle-friendly areas that don’t recycle! It’s crazy. We’ve had to resort to midnight runs to deposit our recyclables in neighborhood bins while no one is looking—it seems strange to have to do that.

One other thing I’ve longed for when we arrive in strange and new places is a website that lists recycling drop-off locations; sometimes schools or grocery store parking lots have bins, but if we don’t know an area very well it can be a pain to find these drop-offs.

We tend to choose the other end of the process as our crusade: convince ourselves and then (hopefully) others to buy less of everything. Less stuff purchased, less stuff manufactured, less stuff tossed away. At the very least, be conscious of what packaging an item comes in.

It’s a Sisyphusian task.

Jack, I do understand your point now, about where recycling programs get started. I didn’t when I first read it at 5 am this morning. I appreciate your reading our blog, by the way, even if we do have opposing political viewpoints. Thanks for making the discussion so interesting. And of course, thank you for your service to this country.

But I also agree with what Susan has to say: if we had a national administration that was truly on board with green energy, conservation and sustainable living, our rural communities, small businesses, etc., would have the funds they needed to implement real change.

Kale, YES! Totally agree about wasteful packaging. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget how in America, the consumer gets the bill for e-waste recycling. WE pay for disposal, whereas in Europe, manufacturers pay for their disposal at the front end, before the items ever leave the warehouse. The way we deal with e-waste in this country is wrong, all in the name of cheap goods.

Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful comments, you made my day.

I recently read a comment from someone at the Natural Resources Defense Council saying that here they are, one of the largest environmental groups in the country and at their headquarters in Washington D.C. they can’t find a way to recycle no. 4 plastic to save their lives. So who can blame the smaller communities Rene mentions if they choose to do business as usual? Hey Rene, there’s a job- start a regional business picking up recyclables from small towns for transport to a central processing plant. Wonder if it would pencil out? Probably only if you could run the vehicles on used veggie oil.