I am NOT hard-core when it comes to recycling. I only started recycling a few years ago when I moved into a community that provided curbside recycling as part of the garbage pickup services. My thinking was (and is) that, if all I have to do is put it in a box and walk it to the curb, it is the LEAST I can do!
On my way to “the least I can do”, I got a little bit interested. It is not something that I am passionate about; it is not something that I worry about; and it is not something that I consider when choosing my friends or children’s playdates. It is just something that I do because it is convenient. If it turns out that my small contribution helps the overall process, that is fine with me. If not, I cannot say that I have sacrificed very much.
While I won’t win any recycling awards, I have learned a little bit about it and I find myself looking for ways that I can recycle things from my house. I have been doing it long enough that I know which of our regular consumables come in recyclable containers and which do not. We actually have containers for “recycling” on each level of our split-level home so that we don’t throw recycling away just because the container is somewhere else.
In my home office, I have started recycling my ink cartridges. Because I own a writing business and I keep track of my business expenses, I started thinking about other ways that I could recycle in my office. I print a lot. I print many things that others read online because I like to be able to hold them in my hand to read them. I always have a pile of reading going and I carry it from my office to my bedroom, to the car, etc. Sometimes, I print things more than once because I forget that I have already printed them. Often, I print things as a reminder. Once I have dealt with that particular task, I don’t need the printed version any more. I don’t make any excuses about how much I print. Likewise, I don’t spend much time trying to print less. I have come to accept myself as a “high volume printer”. The one concession that I DO make to my large amount of printing is to reuse the paper. After I have printed on one side, I turn it over and use the other. Since the vast majority of what I print is for my own use, I consider this to be just a small thing that I can add to the recycling universe.
That brings me to my husband. He has no trouble with the recycling that we do in the kitchen and the upstairs. He has gotten good about putting magazines, junk mail and containers from the upstairs bathrooms in the recycling container that we keep in our closet. When he remembers, he is happy to check for #1 or #2 plastics and send those out as well. Truth be told, he is usually the one that is dragging the container to the street each week. He draws the line, though, at my current practice of recycling my printing paper. He says that life is too short and his eyes are too bad to try to make out which print is on which side of the page. I guess recycling only goes so far!
