If it's Thursday, it's time to put my recycling bin out. Scratch that; if it's Wednesday night, it must be time. I've often heard glass rattling blocks away sometime around daybreak on pickup day.
One of my resolutions this year was to actually use my recycling bin for its original purpose. I've seen people use them as gardening caddies, as laundry baskets and even as huge planters. Mine had not been repurposed. It was just sitting idle under a camellia bush, losing its muscle, going to flab.
Now I carefully separate paper, plastic, aluminum and glass in the container. Luck usually holds that it rains between 24 and 48 hours before recycle day, so paper has a good chance of getting sodden before it gets picked up. I've never called to ask how they feel about that.
Once, back in the fall, I had put an especially backed-up stack of newspapers in the bin, and the rains came and came. I forgot to put the bin out that Thursday, and another soggy week came and went.
When the next Thursday rolled around, the bin weighed almost twice as much as it had, and the papers were developing a moldy patina. I entertained the neighbors as I dragged it across the yard, but the guys gamely dumped the load in the truck and I never got a lecture.
Magazines usually don't get in the bin. I just cut off the labels and put them in our breakroom for somebody else to enjoy. That includes the whole spectrum - OK! to Architectural Digest, sordid to sublime.
Just thinking about recycling and green living in general has reduced my bottled water consumption as well as anything else encased in plastic. I'm the sort of person who removes labels and rinses out the bottles first. The house might look like the interior of one of those places searched by the guys on "Cops," but by golly, I will rinse out my plastic. Knowing that I do this also makes me think twice about using a plastic bottle in the first place.
Glass is where it gets troubling for me. Will my budget wine labels, too difficult to remove, be criticized by passing dog walkers? Or will they wonder how many bottles are in there? Should I put them out minutes before the truck comes? Will anyone really care? (I can answer my own question here.)
These questions probably cross my mind because when I'm walking past someone else's recycling bin, the urge to peek is almost overwhelming, especially if it's brimming with assorted relics.
I hope you're taking full advantage of your recycling bin. As for mine, I can assure you, there's nothing all that interesting down in there.
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