Entry bubble America Recycles Day

By: Nancy | November 15, 2007 | Category: General

In honor of this being the 10th annual America Recycles Day, I wanted to dedicate this blog entry to my favorite recycler, Gov Gab's editor, Becky.

When most people start a job, their initial questions include "Where's the restroom?" and "What time is lunch?" Two years ago, Becky's first questions were along the lines of "Does this office recycle envelopes with windows in them?" and "Whom do I call about proper disposal of this burned out fluorescent light bulb?" Mmmmmm...I dunno. Let me find out. But in the meantime, the ladies room is down the hall on the left and lunch is at noon.

Though we appear to be kind of an Oscar and Felix pairing, the slightly sloppy Nancy and the fairly fastidious Becky have more in common than you'd think. In addition to a shared interest in public radio shows like This American Life and anything involving chocolate, we're both into recycling.

Becky may live a little more of an 'evolved' recycling lifestyle than I do. But I can still rinse a mayo jar and flatten out a cracker box with the best of them. And because my county has curbside, commingled recycling pick ups that allow me to put cardboard, paper, glass and certain plastics all in the same bin, there's no excuse for me not to recycle.

I've become a good kid about things that shouldn't be put in the trash or regular recycling bin, too.  Electronics, batteries and gunky liquids like used oil and paint require special handling. It's tempting to bury that stuff in the bottom of a bag of regular trash, but if we don't dispose of those things separately, their chemicals could end up in the water supply and I'd really rather not bathe in battery acid.

Reusing things like water bottles and shopping bags is another recycling habit that Becky and I share. It's kind of fun to tote a department store bag to the lunch table and then rattle coworkers by pulling out a soda bottle (or in Midwesterner Becky's case, a pop bottle), refilled with milk. We'll eventually recycle those bottles and bags that we're reusing. But giving things like plastic bottles another life before they hit the blue bin means that we're using fewer new containers, which saves us money and saves energy resources since fewer new bottles will have to be manufactured, filled and shipped to stores.

Get on the recycling bandwagon with us! If you're not sure how your area handles recycling, just type the name of your town or county into USA.gov's search box along with the word 'recycling,' and if your locality has a website, like Montgomery County, Maryland's entertaining blog, Talkin' Trash, you'll find it on USA.gov.

Happy America Recycles Day to you, and to Becky. Maybe I'll save this post and use it again this time next year…

 

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