Grace and I started recycling years ago, and we have never looked back! In fact, when we do, we are horrified by thoughts of how much trash we must have thrown away in our lifetimes! *Shudder* Since we have gained some experience in the field, on the front-lines of the garbage battle, we can now recycle our knowledge by passing it on to you, our determined soul reclaiming readers!
For this post, I think I need to first build the setting of our current lifestyle; it will help the portrait I am about to paint.
We live in a small studio apartment on the third floor of our building, at least 300 ft away from the nearest recycling receptacle. (Our complex doesn't even have one, so we go to the business office complex across the parking lot and sneak around a bit in our pajamas. Recycling ninjas? Maybe.) In our small studio apartment, we have an even SMALLER kitchen! It is about the length of an arm and a leg. You can see it here:
If you look in the corner, blocking the fridge door opening space, there is a BIG box! That, dear readers, is our recycling container.
You're asking me why it's so big. Well I return your question with another! Why do they make trash cans bigger than recycling bins?! One of the FIRST things Grace and I have learned since recycling, is that us humans throw away more recyclable material than non-recyclables! Who would expect such a reality? If you are indeed a citizen of current reality, you will find that most of our spending and food money is exchanged for packaged goods inside of transportable packaging, shipped in bulk packages wrapped in plastic. That creates a lot of packaging and containers! You could say we live in a Containerism society! That means we, as the consumers, have a RESPONSIBILITY! The main word of this blog-post! The box is that big because that is how much recycling needs to be done on a weekly basis for the two of us.
When we use something that doesn't belong to us, are we not taught to put it back where it belongs? You could say our role of cultivating this planet causes us to borrow things from the Earth in a "Fair-Trade" exchange, like the stamps you see on organic coffee bean packages. That means when we buy products from the store, we are also summoning a company to create materials for the packaging using the Earth's materials to ship the package by semi-truck to the store where a low-waged worker cuts it open and stocks it for us, and then we drive our cars to the store to get that product, just to rip up all the packaging and discard it. *Screeching halt!!* That packaging should NOT be discarded unless soiled beyond rinsing repair! Remember, we have a "Fair-Trade" exchange with the Earth! We have to "put that thing back where it came from or so help me!" as Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc said when he borrowed a human child. That is essentially the idea of recycling, it is an attempt to pay our respects to the Earth for the bounties we harvest from it. In our case being consumers, we borrow heaps of material that serve one purpose. Isn't it sad that we have to create so many objects over and over again because they only serve one purpose? If only there was a way to have dispensers at stores for all the products available, and we would be forced to bring our own bags and containers, similar to how we are forced to bring our wallet and ID. Then we could reuse until we snooze!
That is essentially the idea of recycling, it is an attempt to pay our respects to the Earth for the bounties we harvest from it.
So back to the big box creating an eye-sore and an arm-sore (since it limits our fridge and cupboard opening ability) in our kitchen. We fill it up with all things recyclable in Arizona (every state has different laws for eligible items, Google yours!). At the end of this post I have included a poster from Phoenix.gov that shows the basic groups of eligible items for Arizonans. Our box fills up once a week, and we are a mere family of TWO (and a half since Grace is pregnant). That's a lot of stuff for two consumers!! It gets pretty heavy for emptied out junk carried down three flights of stairs and across the complex! Why do I go through so much hassle to recycle? If you have that question in your mind, you might as well stamp your Soul Sprout into the ground with your boot. I say this only because this is our DUTY as humans. It is just about the least we can do in our human duty. It is as much of our duty as the other kind of duty we deal with every day in the bathroom! It is not a choice, a privileged person's hobby, or a fantasy. It is understanding reality, our role as human beings, and our RESPONSIBILITY as human beings. It is NEVER the job of someone else to deal with YOUR garbage. If that were true, we would have litter boxes that are taken out by a new breed of janitors! Our mothers and fathers taught us to pick up after ourselves when we were children. So let's all start acting like children already! I will end that point by saying that there should be no need for janitors at Disneyland. Imagine that.
Now that we've got that settled, check this out:
See that ducky bin? That is our TRASH CAN. It is also filled and taken out on a weekly basis by pure coincidence. Guess what it is full of each time? Organic matter and tissues. Even when we use tissues, we rip them in half because they always make them in unnecessarily huge dimensions. We use NO paper towels, and NO napkins. We wash our hands when dirty, and use the little stripey Halloween towel you see on the oven handle. When there is a spill or a mess, we use A SPONGE. NO NO NO paper towels and napkins! If you want them so bad, keep the ones you get at restaurants because they always hand you five million! We've got a drawer full of them off-screen to the left! Also, notice how we started buying water in the bulky dispenser thingies. The ONLY reason we don't use the big blue 5 gallon tanks is because it is not spring water, and if you know of one, TELL ME!
Now here's the awesome thing about our little system setup shindig. The little ducky bin is small, literally a bathroom trash can. That means we only have to use plastic grocery bags as trash can liners, saving money and plastic for doing so. The bags are thinner than the store-bought types, and if we need more strength or drippy proof, we double the bag, or however many we need, but I have never needed more than two. We also never have any issues ridding ourselves of a smelly decomposing garbage bag, as they are easy to throw out. No need to wait til it fills up and have to wallow in artificial-vanilla-bag-mixed-with-rotting-waste scented agony! Even though we found a purpose for grocery bags, we still have tons leftover:
All those babies are going back to the store and getting slam dunked into the bins for recycling grocery bags. We need to get more canvas bags too. We've thought of keeping them in the trunk or backseat so that we don't even have to think about it.
Now that you know the methods of Grace and I, we encourage you to find your own ways of making recycling easier for you. Just remember to disassemble everything you put in there, rinse it out so it is as clean as it gets without soap, or use soap if you want, and break down boxes and smash any other non-glass container so that you can fit tons of stuff in one go! If Grace and I didn't break things down, that box would be going out daily instead of weekly! If you have no recycling options around you or near your living quarters, look around for the closest place, or make a petition to your complex like we are going to. There are very few trials of recycling that Grace and I have not overcome, and that leaves little room for slack when we see people complain about their efforts. We understand, trust us, but we take little slack! We have maintained doing this for an entire year at this apartment, and even longer before then! We used to drive all the way to Encanto Park to use their tiny bins where we would fill two each time! Check out how far we went every week JUST to recycle!!
It causes me emotional duress just throwing away our little ducky bin baggies. To know that every single item in there that is not organic will take an unknown amount of years to decompose, and it will poison the environment with all the man-made additives and colors and harmful ingredients. That is a sad truth, and I regretfully throw away each bag. I do not stop thinking about the trash I throw away. I know that it is all still there, EVERYTHING I have thrown away in my ENTIRE LIFE still exists somewhere. Don't let the familiar logos on packaging fool you into forgetting how EACH TIME you buy a bag of chips, it is indeed a NEW bag, ANOTHER item of near-permanent trash as soon as you finish the last chip. Earth didn't always exist this way. We didn't always have trash that decomposed abnormally slow. That is just ONE of the reasons why Grace and I wish to be on a homestead, going back to the way things are MEANT to be as much as possible. People act like this is the way it HAS to be for society to work on this scale of population. Those particular folks could not be more wrong. Things can ALWAYS be improved, and the second someone tells me "that's just the way it is", is the second that their Soul is buried in a landfill that will be more difficult to reclaim than if it were just damaged soil. I will tell them the way things are. We are never sure of tomorrow, we have no idea what it will bring. The way things are right now are leading to some sort of collapse somewhere down the line, and I would like to become self-sustainable and prepared for any such occasion, so that I can survive and teach others how to survive the way we are meant to survive. In real reality, which is inseparable from Nature. Since I am still a part of society and my goals remain goals at this point, I will continue to do my best to remove at least ONE footprint, MY footprint, off of the hurting Soul Sprouts of the world. I encourage you, our readers, to reclaim your soil, and follow Grace and I in our endeavors together.
Here is the promised poster of recycling categories:
Anything plastic is most likely recyclable as long as it is rinsed clean! Even little pieces, like the vacuum sealers under lids! Just remember with plastic that if it has more than one type of plastic, which caps of all kinds tend to be, they need to be separated. It's a learning process. Grace and I keep lots of glass jars for tumblers and for more efficient storage than Tupperware, just remember to remove the lids of EVERY container or bottle and recycle it separately. The general guideline is to break down and single out everything as much as possible. If the lid is metal, recycle it. Almost anything metal can be recycled including cans. Any aluminum soda cans. Any clean paper materials (no grease nor grime). If it is mostly clean, like a pizza box, tear off the good parts. No gift bags unfortunately (unless clearly recyclable paper which is usually matte, not shiny), but hopefully we all have a re-gift pile of bags stored away. Only wrapping paper that is NOT lined with shininess can be recycled, so go buy some recycled/recyclable wrapping paper and gift bags and ditch the glossy stuff! You can also cut up gift bags and wrapping paper for scrap-booking and mixed media. Get creative, it's one of the best things you can do in life as long as it's in positive ways.
RECYCLE YOUR JUNK MAIL!!! Each week Grace and I watch in horror as over a pound of junk mail is thrown away just on the ONE side of our complex. People don't even LOOK at it! Why do they send it still to this day?!?! I need to find out how to refuse it from the senders. I think it's a lot of work though, but I will make a post about it when I find out.
The last thing I will say is that we must always be mindful of the facility workers at the recycling plant who sort through the conveyer belts looking for things that should not be there. They MUST remove capped items, and anything that has food left on it, and anything that is not recyclable. If you are in doubt, ask someone, ask me, ask Google!
Thank you for reading such a long post, I hope it doesn't come across as a cliche recycling poster like the one I drew on and posted. Let us know what you think in the comments! If you have any suggestions to add, add them to the comments too and let us know!
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