It's not easy being green

What's this?It's my recycling station, nestled in the laundry between the pantry and the washing machine. It's a nifty container with three plastic bins each under a lid with a step-on pedal for hands-free operations. With it, you can easily and cleanly sort and store recyclable materials.

It's also one of the more superfluous things in my house. Let me explain.

Back before I bought this, I had a wicker hamper lined with a plastic bag. It wasn't very big, and since it was weeks between the curbside recycling pickups, it would overflow. In order to keep down the mess, I would sort the contents by type (aluminum, steel, paper, plastic 1, plastic 2) into paper bags and haul them to the recycling station down near the park. This was what my husband referred to as "driving the garbage around town". I had been doing this for years ever since we lived in an apartment complex without recycling pickup. Things got easier when the city put a satellite recycling dropoff in my end of town, but I still had too much recycling to let it lie around the place until the curbside pickup.

So, if I was going to sort it and dump it, I thought it would be easier to add pre-sorting into the mix and got my neat stainless triple sorter. So, cans went in one bin, plastic into another and steel/glass in the third. Paper went into a basket near it in the laundry. On recycling day, I picked up the bins out of the recycling station, put them in the station wagon and used the nifty handles to carry them from the car to the humongous labeled skips where I deposited each kind of material. Then the bins went back into the car and away I went. Easy-peasy, with the sorting done ahead of time.

Then the city got all eco-conscious and decided that we would have biweekly recycling pickup. They also cancelled our scheduled monthly brush and grass clippings pickup, but that's another gripe. So, now every other Friday the big green truck comes around to pick up our bagged recyclables. All they ask is that we put the stuff in blue plastic bags or bins so they can discern it from just plain trash. You can even mix all the types of materials in a single bag. It gets sorted and screened at the dumping point. This is good, except the bins in my recycling station are black, and would not be recognized for what they were, so I have to put the contents in a blue plastic bag (Isn't that inherently wasteful? And do you know how hard it is to find blue plastic garbage bags? But I digress.)

Now, I take each bin, dump it in one of the small blue plastic bags I found and set it on the curb. The bags are so small I usually have three - aluminum, plastic and paper. I don't collect up much steel so I save it for months to make a load, and the glass can't be left at the curb - I still have to take it into the satellite dropoff. If I could buy really large blue bags I could put all the contents into one of them and comingle the contents - the city doesn't care.

So all my pre-sorting work is out the window. I could use my wicker hamper again if it hadn't fallen apart. The only thing positive about all this sorting and separate bagging is that I can imagine the city workers pointing at my house and saying "The people who live here have the tidiest recycling in town!"

Recycling

I continue to be amazed at the steps my city is taking to support recycling and trash management. We have monthly curbside pickup of nearly all recyclables except glass (which as of September will become bi-monthly) and can take materials such as glass, aluminum, paper, steel, cardboard, used motor oil, fluorescent bulbs, computer/electronic equipment and batteries to multiple recycling convenience centers throughout the city. There is also a monthly disposal day for chemicals and paint, a burn pit for brush and tree trimmings and a disposal center for trash such as building materials. There is a monthly brush pickup, too, and you can schedule a bulky trash pickup like old appliances with a call or a visit to the city website.

This is only one example of services from city where there are benefits in living inside the city limits, and you feel you get something for your city taxes.

This program seems very forward-thinking for a medium size southern city with a industrial past and reputation for pollution. Add the fact that they employ mentally-challenged adults from the local education and training center for children and adults with mental retardation and mental developmental problems and you get an effort which truly serves all citizens of the city.

Kudos to the city government for their actions (and thanks for the Recycle Right logo). I have lived in several cities and towns in the state and visited many more, and I have to say that this one is the best of the lot. I was a little apprehensive when I moved here, but it has turned out wonderfully. There are so many positive things about the city - services, parks and public areas, a recovering downtown and growing tourist attraction base to support it, decent crime levels, affordable real estate and cost of living.

Of course, there are issues - any place has them - but on the whole I feel that the city government is trying to get it right. Recently, I have been dismayed at the perks and incentives they have showered on a company to entice them to establish a manufacturing center here , but that's not unusual. Most cities anymore practically give away the farm to lure a new employer to town. I'm just hoping that it works out and brings in ancillary companies as forecast. We could use more semi-skilled jobs and it might even raise my property values!