Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

In my area, the department of Waste Management is going to be hiring garbage police. These would be people that check your garbage bags to make sure that you don’t have any recyclables in there. And the proposal is, that if you regularly throw recyclables into your regular garbage pickup, you would be fined $1000 for each infraction.

Recycling has been a law here for years, and there are still people who refuse to conform to the law. Why shouldn’t they be treated as criminals, when they ARE!

I live in a household of seven people. We generate a LOT of “garbage” every week. But it gets separated out into food refuse (all organics) or any paper product that has food refuse on it, which goes in a separate lidded bin. Paper, cans and recyclable plastic can be mixed into one container because the city employs companies that separate it. Yard waste (that does NOT include grass clippings). And garbage that does not belong to any of the other categories (tissue paper, old and worn clothing that is not good enough for re-sale, old pillows and bedding, bed, couches, etc.). If something is made of metal (or predominantly metal) it needs to be picked up by a special truck for recycling, and you can call to make an appointment for that one.

We recycle continuously. We separate out the recyclables and place them in their proper containers, at the time that we decide to throw them out. It makes it much easier on us.

But do you know, that since we have started recycling we regularly have five or six containers of recyclables out at the curb every second week (organics are picked up every week). And only TWO bags of garbage every second week. Recycling DOES work, and keeps so many items out of landfill that can be broken down into their component chemicals and reused to make more consumer products.

And we can help at the store, by buying those items that are made from recycled material.

The Expert answers:

I’m single, live alone, no pets. But I am a pretty garbage-intensive person. I have a medium sized plastic garbage can indoors, and I tend to generate about three bags a week. This counts everything that I am dumping into the garbage from the wastebaskets. It may not be politically correct, but I do not recycle cans and bottIes. I do send appropriate stuff (banana and orange peels, etc.) down the garbage disposal and usually take cardboard to recycling. I shred advertisements, bills, documents, etc. And put the shreddings in the garbage bag, too. I take my bag out when it is full, usually every two to three days or if there’s anything in it that could develop a strong smell (like meat wrappers, tuna fish cans, etc.) if left in the garbage for several days.

The Expert answers:

Very little we recycle no-deposit glass & plastic bottles, cardboard and food boxes, paper bags, plastic bags and aluminum foil and any cans. The county picks it up once a week. Anything that’s vegetable or fruit that is left over gets composted. About the only thing get goes in the garbage is food with bones and facial tissue. We throw out one kitchen size bag a week for the garbage

The Expert answers:

Reuse clean bags when shopping,
re wrap baked goods to be kept in freezer,
in a pinch use as a hood in rain,
garbage bag,
liner for compost pail on kitchen counter,
for packing fragile items stuff newspaper in plastic bags and tie,
use as ties,
cover cuttings in flower pot for propagation with clear plastic bags,
store garments out of wool in bag taped close to prevent moths from damaging them.

The Expert answers:

For page 2: “Look at what this lovely paper bag could have been.”
For page 3: “There’s always an alternative! You just need to be some what clever.”
For page 4: “Whether or not you believe in Global Warming. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a clean house? Garbage Cans alone aren’t always enough to keep your house fully clean but when you add a recycle bin into the equation, you can throw away twice as much junk. The only downside is that the recycling bin is a bit more picky than the garbage can.”

The Expert answers:

I buy high end bags and double bag everything. First I wash as much food smell off of it as I can and then spray 409 on it. Why? Well, if I was a trash pick up person, I would appreciate it. I also have bears who know how to open the cans. So after I put it in the cans outside in the yard, I chain the lids down. It is picked up once a week. I also keep the paper garbage in a different can than the food garbage. Bears don’t go for the paper trash. Up on the mountain in the boonies they do not know about recycling yet.

The Expert answers:

In the supermarket, look for Hefty Garbage Bags. They come in 30 gal sizes, box of 25 or 30 cost about 3 bucks, a bit more if you want a fashionable drawstring.

If you need bigger, go to your nearest home improvement center and ask for ‘leaf bags’.

You can also get them in blue, so you can mix and match. For these, ask for ‘recycling bags’. The blue ones are usually quite a bit more expensive than the black bags. Don’t know why, except to take advantage of the libs.

Btw, you can also use them as a raincoat by cutting arm and head holes. Heck, you can wear them anytime! Be the first to set a new trend!

Good Luck.

The Expert answers:

I take it you’re referring MOSTLY to celebrity “environmentalists” who had to pick a “cause-celeb” to fill the time between their movies or albums or whatever…

I AGREE wholeheartedly, and like the answerer who mentioned Ed Begley, Jr. !! I will also point out that his neighbor “Bill Nye the Science Guy” is also a REAL and quiet environmentalist…

I happen to have been raised by a conservative environmentalist… We voted for Reagan but had a garden and compost, we recycled grey-water, and sorted all our garbage.

I’m NOW old (45), own my own ranch and consider myself a “conservative environmentalist”. SURE we own a large diesel 4×4 truck and tractor for ranch chores… But they’ve been running on home-made bio-diesel since 1999 our other ride is a hybrid. Our ranch operations and home are almost entirely powered by solar and wind… We actually get a check each year from the power-company because we put more ONTO the grid than we use.

We recycle… A family of 5 that only takes 3 bags of garbage to the dump every MONTH – compared to the 10-12 bags of cans and glass we recycle in the same time. We don’t drink bottled water. All cardboard and paper is either taken to the recycling center or shredded on the ranch for mulch or bedding for the chickens. Once a year we take our HAZ-MAT (oil, lubricants, paints, used batteries, etc) to the center… NONE of it goes in the trash.

We also happen to grow about 75% of our food on the ranch, so we have very little in the way of packaging.

And limousine liberals call us conservatives “trashers of the environment” !!

The Expert answers:

Instead of throwing away things that can be recycled, set them off to the side to actually be recycled, and I mean down to the littlest scrap of plastic or paper. Before you start your project weigh the garbage when you take it out. The week that you remove all the recyclable items and compost all the food waste measure the bags before you throw away the actual garbage and note the difference. From there you can explain how every bit of what you didn’t throw away would have ended up in a landfill and now that its been recycled it can end up back in the stream of materials humans use, cutting down on raw materials that have to go into our stuff.