On to a few short items about putting sending less stuff to the landfill. It's sort of a personal challenge to me to see how little stuff I can put in the garbage. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
1. Why is it so difficult for even smart, well-educated, Madisonians - i.e. people who should know how to recycle and why it's important - to figure out how to out a bottle or can in the recycling bin? I work at the UW, and pretty much every hallway has blue bins prominently labeled as "bottles and cans" or ""paper and newspapers" at each end of the hall. There are also recycling bins in many offices and break rooms. Yet I consistently find cans and bottles in the trash.I'm not going through the trash looking for these things. I'm walking down the hall to the bus, and there outside an office is a small bin to be emptied by the cleaning crew: Plastic shrink wrap from a shipment, take-out container, coffee cup, a few napkins or paper towels, an apple core, and a soda can or bottle. Why? Why is it so tough to put that can or bottle in the container just steps away?
2. On a more positive note, I recently was reminded of Terracycle, a service that will take a lot of items that might either be cluttering up your house or going in the trash. They will turn your trash and clutter into either new items or rehabilitate what you send: Pens that don't work, old shoes, wrappers from energy bars, cereal and cracker bags, Britta filters, toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, and lots more. It has eased my conscience to be able to bring those things in to work and have a place to recycle them instead of tossing them in the trash, or worse, hanging on to them out of guilt. ("Yeah, that pen doesn't really work very well, but it works sometimes, I shouldn't just throw it out. And that old toothbrush could be used to clean my bike or for other cleaning jobs. I should hang on to that.)
Someone in our office collects all the stuff and sends it in once a month. Terracycle will even send you the shipping label. If you have enough of certain items, you can designate a charity to receive a small donation. I'm sorting through all the old pens that don't work, the worn our shoes, and saving my wrappers to send in.
3. As I was brushing my teeth yesterday, (Why do great ideas always come to us when we can't write them down?) I started thinking about the beer bottle caps I'd been saving for a friend. He had told me that someone he knew was collecting as many types of bottle caps as he could. My friend knows that I like to try out different beers, so I might have a wide variety of breweries I could contribute. So I have a small bar of caps to give to him.
But then I started thinking about all the other bottle caps I'm throwing away. They are metal, so why can't they be recycled? So, being a good researcher, I Googled it. The first page I found was very useful - with photos! It said that metal bottle caps are steel, and can be recycled, but not just thrown into the bin as is. The problem is that they are very small, so they fall through the screens at the sorting center [video of how they sort materials with machines - actually pretty cool] and the caps never make it to the magnet that picks up steel. Recycling Week confirmed the problem and the solution.
But these two pages suggested a solution, which City of Madison Recycling Guru George Dreckmann confirmed is the way to go. (I was sort of proud of the fact that I actually provided him with this solution, which he had not thought of.) Put the caps into a steel can - like the ones that hold soup, tomato sauce, canned veggies, etc. Crimp the top so that the caps don't fall out, and then put that whole thing into the recycling. It's all steel, and that whole can will be picked up by the magnets. Do NOT use an aluminum (soda) can, because that would be mixing different kinds of metal, which is a no-no.
4. Finally, I am constantly amazed by people that stop composting in the winter. I understand not wanting to hike to the back yard in deep snow and bitter cold - both of which I did this morning to reach the compost bin with my just-about-full kitchen container. But on the coldest days, you could just dump it into a bucket outside the back door until the snow melts or the temps get more reasonable. That's what I did every year until I forgot to empty said bucket of ready-to-use compost before winter descended.
And besides, I like being outside, and emptying the compost is a chance to follow the bunny tracks to the back of the yard to where I know they are hiding in the brush pile.
But most people seem to think that they can't compost because everything will freeze. And yes, most of the pile will freeze, but not all of it. You'd be surprised how much of the pile is actually not frozen, sitting there creating heat for whatever critter has crawled in. Besides, it will all thaw out eventually, and then all those coffee grounds, bits of veggies, and stale bread will be ready to start over.
Oh, and one more thing I've started throwing in the compost: Kleenex. I usually get one bad cold a year, usually in winter, and go through almost a whole box of tissues in a short period of time. And then there is the normal nose blowing from dry air and cold outdoor temperatures. Instead of throwing it in the trash, I pile it into the kitchen bins and then the backyard pile.
It all just disappears into the compost. I have yet to find any paper left when I'm ready to throw it into the garden. Corncobs will still be there, along with bits of tough stems and other plant material that takes longer to degrade. But that can just go back into the bin for another round.
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