Recycling 0

We have been recycling.

No, we’re not green freaks.

It started with newspaper and gradually expanded to everything else.

Delaware makes it easy. You can either pay money and have the state pick it up (Urk!) or just drop it off at a recycling center. There’s one about two miles north of here, right on the way to DL, another one about two miles south of me right on the way to I-495 (my favored way around the city), and one in the state park just over there behind my back fence right on the way to the main street of the east coast.

So, from time to time, I just toss the junk in the back of the truck and leave 15 minutes early to wherever I’m going.

And now, except for batteries, corrugated paper, waste oil, and plastic grocery bags, you don’t even have to separate.

Yesterday, the local rag had a good article about what can–and cannot be–recycled. If you even dabble in recycling, it can be interesting reading. For example:

I had thought packages with food on them couldn’t be recycled. Not long ago, I told her, I’d thrown out an empty flour bag.

Just shake it out, she said, and put it with the rest of the paper.

Bottom line: A bit of residue is all right. Goo is not.

I thought I’d get her on the soup and milk boxes. Aren’t they foil-lined? “Just paper,” she reassured me.

But even experts don’t know what to do with everything.

Birtel picked up a noodle bag and turned it over, looking for clues, then shrugged. “It’s not marked. I can’t tell.”

Birtel’s rule of thumb: If the plastic is pliable – like bread bags and veggie bags – it can go in the storefront bins for recycling plastic check-out bags, which aren’t accepted for curbside recycling.

If it crinkles or crunches, it’s probably not recyclable.

Anything that’s mixed materials in one package – foil and paper, say – can’t be recycled.

(Now, I have heard reports of supermarkets throwing away plastic grocery bags left in the “storefront bins” when their recycling company hasn’t picked them up in time, though a quick Google didn’t turn any of them up, so I’m happier dropping mine off with the state.)

Oh, yeah, about those plastic grocery bags. I like to bag my own groceries with paper, when the grocery store has paper in stock. It’s awfully irritating when the clerks bag them in plastic bags. I get 20 items. I come home with 18 plastic bags.

With paper bags and little bit of that spatial recognition stuff us guys are supposed to be good at, I get 20 items, I come out with two, maybe three bags, depending on how many big things I bought. What the heck do they teach the staff about bagging anyway?

Furrfu.

Oh, yeah, and a paper grocery bag is just the right size for a weeks worth of Inkys.

H/T to Linda for catching the article.