Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Single-Stream Recycling

We have been avid recyclers now for about 2-3 years. Before that it was just cans, glass and paper. Our town recently went to single-stream recycling. A good majority of people objected to it because of the increase to their bill and thought how could you recycle with everything thrown together? I'm not sure if everyone else in their cities have started but basically you throw everything together, no bags. When it came down to it though everyone wanted to try out these cool karts. We live in the country but off a main road so we were offered a cart. In town you get picked up twice a month, here in the country, once. That for us is going to be a huge drawback because we recycle so much. They'd like no bags but with us in the country we are allowed because of the once a month deal. We normally put out 12-15 of the tall blue trash bags out in a month. I also have a bag of cans but we take them in for cash. We currently throw maybe 2 bags of trash in our poly kart a week, if that. I'd say about 95% of our trash is recyclable.

I love the fact that I can have an extra easy chore for one of the kids. ;) We recycle so much that they can easily take out a big trash can every day (or other day) light as can be and dump it.
Our town is not mandatory however I know alot of nearby ones are. Offering a nice fancy kart though I'd say nearly everyone here is doing it. Anyone else doing single-stream?

3 comments:

Bird's Eye View Photography said...

Never heard of it! ...and not only that our town is not pro active at all where recycling is concerned. I wish it were! Luckily where we are moving it is a lot more easy and readily available to do so! I plan to take them up on everything they offer!

Shana said...

I'm in Phoenix, and we've had single-stream recycling for at least as long as I've had my house, so for 8 years. Our recycling bins look just like yours, but with a City of Phoenix logo on the side. It must have been a pain to have to sort everything!

The Merry Band of Fife said...

Boise just started doing this last year - I LOVE it. We put out more recycling than garbage and what's not good about that. Now we just need to start composting...