Well, yes, I have always been a bit trashy. Just ask my friends. They can attest to my trashy vices. I’ve been known to stop on a dime when I spot a good trash pile on bulk trash day. In fact, I have been known to phone a friend and tell them about a particularly good trash pile.
One of my favorite stories involves a handmade basket woven around a Charles Chips can that a neighbor had put out for bulk trash. I snapped it up, gave it a good spruce up with Old English and took it to a local consignment store. A few weeks later I received my cut of the sale…$17.46!!! Now isn’t that a Fabulous example of one gal’s trash being another gal’s treasure?
I like to think that bulk trash day here in Dallas as more of a neighborhood-wide free give away. When I have bulk trash, I stack it in a blob in front of the house but when I have an old chair, or a pile of metal (no matter how small) this kind of trash gets its own spot on my curb – away from the non-useable stuff. When I get home from work and see that the metal guys have stopped by to claim their prize or a neighbor has taken in the wayward chair for their own, I am euphoric!
I started recycling in earnest when the city of Dallas started picking up my recyclables along with my trash on Wednesdays. Before then I was saving cans for a friend’s dad (he smushed them and sold them for a few cents per lb out in Mesquite, I guess they had a facility out there that bought them for a bit of cash). My glass went to an igloo receptacle at Teitse park and I didn’t think my little family went through enough plastic to mess with. Ah, the days before bottled water! When Dallas made the offer to pickup my recyclables at my curb, they couldn’t take glass because it was dangerous for the collectors and I already had a place to recycle my cans, so I decided to save my plastic. In a very short time, I had accumulated a blue bag of plastic containers of all shapes and sizes. Hmm, maybe my little family of 4 really did throw away more than we should. I had proven to myself that I was making a much heavier footprint on the earth than I had ever imagined.
I have come a long way since that realization. It took a while, but now hubby and kids are also trained to rinse and recycle. We have had heated family debates on the recycle-ability of pizza boxes (they are not recyclable because the cardboard is contaminated with organic matter. Even if the organic matter is from Whole Foods organic pizzas) and food containers (look for the recycle symbol stamped into them but be sure to rinse off any food before putting them into your bin). Even guests to our house are introduced to the placement of the recycle bin in our kitchen. How wonderful it is for a visiting teenager to utter those precious words, “Do you recycle?”.