Anyone who lives in GJ can't help but notice that this week is our "Spring Cleanup" where everyone gets to put out all their stuff that they don't want and the city picks it up for free and hauls it to the dump. You can't drive down a residential street without having to drive halfway in the median for fear of hitting your neighbor's pile o' trash. As I drive by all these piles, I can't help but think "Why didn't you just recycle that?" or "Can't you give that to Goodwill?" Seriously, what have you done to that mattress that not even a seriously cash strapped person wouldn't use it? Is a family of rats living inside it? Is there a dead body inside it? (I saw that on a tv show or movie or something sometime. If I were to need to dispose of a dead body in a landfill, I would so do it during spring cleanup. No one would ever find it. But ok, this is getting morbid. Good thing I have no dead bodies to dispose of.) Seriously though - just b/c it's easier to push it out to the curb doesn't mean that you should do it.
I admit that I am not the 'greenest' person out there, but I think we all have to do our part. Of course I recycle, try to reduce all of our waste (we've even stopped using garbage bags for the most part), grow some of our food, have solar heating on our house, when a lightbulb breaks - we replace it with a fancy new efficient one, etc. But there are just certain things that I am not ready for. For example - E.C. (For those of you who don't know what EC is, it's 'elimination communication' - where you don't use any sort of diapers on your baby.) Yeah, I'm not ready for that. My friend Allison makes her own detergent, and while I think that's awesome and someday might aspire to that, I'm just not ready right now. However, how hard is it to call Goodwill and have them pick up your mattress instead of hauling it to the curb and making your neighbors drive around it for a week until the city gets there?
To use Dr. Seuss's words:
"Unless someone like you, cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. It's not."
If I can use this as a jumping off point, let me go on a tangent for a minute.
First, why doesn't our city (or a lot of cities for that matter) recycle more things than they do? What about all those plastics that aren't #1 or #2? Seriously, all the food products come in #5s now. Why don't we recycle 'glossy cardboard?' Do you KNOW how many diaper and wipe boxes I have thrown away and then felt so guilty about b/c the recycling won't take them? And cracker boxes, and cereal boxes, and, and, and...
I have many more tangents I could write about (like the other day when I saw this lady stop and start loading stuff from my neighbor's pile into her van... hmmmm....), but frankly, I'm going to bed.
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3 comments:
Oh, I know what you mean!! Kirksville does a "Kirksville Clean-up", where the exact same thing happens. But (no offense to the locals here) it's MUCH worse in the Midwest. Lots of people keep their trash all year long, because they're too cheap to pay $1 for an orange sticker to put on extra bags of trash. So when clean-up time starts, for some people it looks like half of their belongings are out on their front lawn!! I get embarassed when we have company during this time of year, and even embarassed for strangers who are passing through!
As for recycling, we ALWAYS have, and always will. Maybe you should start emailing the city manager, mayor, county officers, and the Daily Sentinel. Couldn't hurt. =)
I know what you mean but i guess people just find it easier.
I love to freecycle stuff, make the person wanting pick it up and saves me not having to do any work but gives my unwanted stuff to someone else
Here in Cheyenne, for the most part, they won't even take milk cartons or plastic water bottles. It's such a shame! We've become kind of creative with what we do with our throw-aways. Of course, it heps that Kevin's an environmental scientist, so he's more conscious of stuff like that than most. Are your boxes from wipes the plastic ones with the lids that snap shut? We started keeping them. We clean them out, then use them for bobbins, thread, and little things to keep the sewing room organized. I think I even have one filled with velcro strips. That way we don't have to buy plastic boxes and we don't have to throw these ones away. It works great! Also, you know the big plastic buckets that laundry soap comes in? If you poke some holes in the bottom for drainage, you can plant tomato plants in them. It's wonderful if you don't have a place to plant them that's in the direct sunlight because you can move them whenever you need to. Too bad I haven't found any use for used milk cartons and water bottles yet!
(sorry Lori that my comment is soooooo long!)
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