No recycling?

Lately we have been generating a lot of trash at home. I guess between things getting used up, various gifts/stuff in the mail, loads of cooking and all, we have just created a lot of waste. We do not have curbside recycling. You might think it’s the norm these days but our small, local trash removal company doesn’t do it. So, we’ve been searching for places to drop off the recycling. We are in an unincorporated portion of a city which does offer curbside recycling. So, said city doesn’t have drop off locations for recyclables.

I dug around on the web and found two options. Our county does offer drop off bins in several of the smaller towns, one of which is about 5 miles away, so that is doable. Also, my husband learned that as a volunteer firefighter for a local municipality (not the one we livein ) he can have access to the recycling bins behind that town hall, earmarked for their recycling. The bonus about this is that he goes to the fire station a few times a week (scheduled) so we can send recycling at those time without making an extra trip.

Next to decide is how we want to store/sort the recyclables. We can drop them off unsorted, so that is nice. I have currently repurposed the box the kitchenaide mixer came in (it was a birthday present my husband received recently). It will do for now. I looked on Amazon for some ideas and found some bags to sort things into. The bags velcro to each other at the top with tabs which keeps them upright. They have a water resistant fabric on the inside.

I like this option for several reasons. The bags are machine washable. Since we have to transport our recyclables further than just to the end of the driveway it’s nice to have them already in bags. If we find we need fewer bags, storing those we aren’t using won’t take up much space. And, if, at a later time curbside recycling becomes available and we are given a bin, these bags can be repurposed into something else. Washed I can see them useful as clothes hampers or toy receptacles for our future children, holding sports equipment or camping equipment in the closet, even carrying wood for camping trips and stuff.

So, the husband got online and ordered 2 sets (6 bags). That should be plenty. We plan to save our newsprint type paper for composting.

Between the composting and the recycling I’d like to get us down to only one or two bags of trash per week. We currently produce at least four or five which seems enormous for two people but a lot of it ends up being cardboard boxes from deliveries and such and all that which are bulky.

I need to also find out if the cleaners the husband goes to recycles wire hangers since we have tons and usually they get thrown away.

I am looking forward to the day when we have this stuff figured out and a system in place so it’s not so much work to get going. Currently I’m trying to get on top of some of the mess that has built up in the house since the wedding, moving in of my stuff and all of that. And also reducing the amount of stuff we both have. Yikes. There is a lot of stuff. Anyone need any books?!