Recycling

So many people complain about the effort it takes to recycle stuff and part of that is due to the number of conditions of what you can and cannot recycle. There are times when you can't even see the number that is on a bottom on a container to determine if it qualifies or not.

I know that for us we can recycle different things than my parents can, as we live in an apartment building and they live in a house. We both live in the same city so that isn't what makes the difference it is how the items are picked up which is different. I know that different cities have different rules of what is recyclable and that is also confusing.

I know that in some places, especially fast food establishments, you put all your garbage and recyclable into one container and there is someone that sorts it out. I am not sure who does the sorting but I have to admit that I am not 100% confident that these establishments are really doing any recycling. There are other food establishments that go as far as having even a spot where you can dispose of food waste separately so it can be composted.

Recycling - a challenge

We were recently in getting our car serviced and they do have a spot for recycling but now they have put a stool in front of it which means that customers aren't going to recycle when someone is sitting in front of it. For people to do the act of recycling it needs to be something that is easy to do and not require a lot of additional effort.

For us we are people that try and recycle as much as possible. We have recycle bins in our apartment unit in a couple of places so that it is easy to throw the recyclable stuff into the correct bins and then once we have enough we take it downstairs and put it into the large bins that are out the back of our building.

Recycling - bins blocked

The other thing that is easy for recycling is remembering that if you don't need to print something out you just don't. I have been saying more and more things as pdf's and documents onto my computer instead of printing it out. By just not printing things out I am also saving money as I don't need as much toner for the printer or paper. I also have been able to reduce the space that I use sorting all the different things that I printed off.

Recycling is something that we all need to think about and do a bit of. The other thing is that businesses and cities need to make it easy for us to do the actual act of recycling.