Car Trash Recycling Confession

As I was writing my post yesterday, I realized that I don't recycle my trash from the car.

We travel a lot in our car and the trash can pile up quickly.  I'd love to tell you that my car is immaculant, but it is no where near that.  You ever seen the gags on TV where trash falls out of the car when the door is opened?  Well, that used to be me.  It's not that bad anymore, but still bad enough.  Whenever people comment on it, I just tell them, well you can tell that I don't litter.

When I do clean out the car, all the trash goes into one bag, and that goes directly into the trash dumpster.

Due to my Diet Coke addiction, there are many cans that make it into the dumpster from the car--but I can make myself feel better about that because there are no less than 3 people who regularly comb the dumpsters for recycling in my urban neighborhood.

One guy has quite the system.  Three large trash bins.  One for cans, one for bottles (which he smashes into the bin to conserve space--truly is quite rude at 6:30 am), and one for plastic, all on a cart that he pushes through the bumpy alley.  Actually he may have 4 bins on it--one for miscellaneous items--I watch him from time to time when he wakes me up.

I've thought a couple times about putting a trash bin in the garage, but don't want to invite bugs and varmits.  But, if I put one down there that is just for recycling, that might work. It's not like we keep food trash in the car--mostly paper and cans.

I'll report to you when I have done this, and also when I have remedied the bathroom trash issues.

It Started With a Little Change

When I first started recycling it was for the bit of extra change it provided in a pinch. It really was a pain though--trying to find a spot to keep the bags of cans until I was ready to cash them in.

When I bought a condo, it had recycling bins that were picked up by a waste management company. It was so much easier to just dump them in the bin.  Since it was so much easier, we started to recycle other things too like bottles and some paper (mostly junk mail).   But every once in a while, the recycle bin was too full so the junk mail went into the trash.

Then I saw a woman on TV (Rachel Ray show maybe) a couple years ago who was just a maniac at recycling.  It impressed me.

The idea was to have more recycling bins than trash bins.

So after I repainted my kitchen/dining room area, I needed a solution to get the trash/recycling bins out of the dining room.

My daughter convinced me that we could live with smaller bins and put them under the sink -- I of course fought the idea of smaller bins, and she promised to take them out regularly.

So, keeping in mind what I had seen on the show, I bought three small trash cans to go under my sink--two for recycling and one for trash.  The two for recycling fill up a couple times a week and the trash fills up maybe once a week....BUT!  when I take the bag from the trash bin it only fills about one quarter of the kitchen sized bag--it is the smallest bin of the three.

Now, when the recycling is too full for the junk mail, I know it is time to take the recycling down to the purple bins. I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I put a piece of recycling into the trash bin because I know it is not necessary.

I still need to take the trash down as often as I did before, but that is only to get rid of the smell.  Some weeks, the trash bin isn't full at all, but it is stinky and goes downstairs.

If I had a composter half of that trash would be put to good use. One day I will have a place to compost and a garden to use it.

Now that I am finishing this post, I remember that on the show they put recycling bins everywhere there was a trash can--even in the bathrooms--hardly any real trash in those.  My bathrooms are pretty small...so adding a second bin is not really practical.  I will have to think about this further and come up with a solution. I do have this cute tall tin that is not being used--maybe I could use that for the trash.  I'll have to do that.  Then there is the car.  I'll have to write another post with recycling tips.

Later!