Do you recycle?

[RowdysMom]

I "liked" your pic and yes, we recycle. I live in Austin Texas, a very crunchy city . We've had recycle bins for many years and I really enjoy recycling and knowing that I am helping the environment a little bit.

[Beamers Mom]

I "liked" your pic. Good luck on the contest.
We recycle here - it's mandatory.

[diannenet]

Thank you everyone for your votes! I won. That's the first time I've ever won anything like that. There were five other participants and the most votes each of them had was 2. I had 28 votes.

[julietravels]

Originally Posted by diannenet

Thank you everyone for your votes! I won. That's the first time I've ever won anything like that. There were five other participants and the most votes each of them had was 2. I had 28 votes.

Big congratulations to you! Happy to know that I helped someone win for the very first time. Have a few margaritas on us at Yorkietalk. I now live in Mexico and when I drive back to the U.S. I bring glass, bottles,cans and plastic bags that I recycle as I can't stand to throw them away.

[kdhawks]

Originally Posted by diannenet

Thank you everyone for your votes! I won. That's the first time I've ever won anything like that. There were five other participants and the most votes each of them had was 2. I had 28 votes.

Congrats on your win! That is awesome!

[DJDB]

Congrats!

I am a big recycler. Maybe a little too pushy about it at work, where I'm known as the "recycling Nazi" (the person who coined that was fired though). I care about recycling!! I've cut our garbage at work by about 60%. We used to put out 2 bags of garbage a week, now we put out less than one.

At home I'm the same. We rarly have one full bag of garbage, the rest is recycled. It's easy where I live because you don't even have to sort it. You just put it all in the blue bag together and it gets sorted at the recycling plant.

[RowdysMom]

We have single stream recycling too (putting everything together in one big bin). Our recycle bin is as large as our trash bin, but they only pick up our recycling every other week. I usually have a full bin of recycling. It has reduced my trash by as least half, maybe more. I really think its important to recycle.

[bWY39]

I wish you luck in your endeavours and well done indeed.

My wife and I are avid recyclers we have full bins and sacks for each collection. I recycle everything and everything and I even shred paper in my machine to make sure we get it all in.

Whilst I am a dedicated recycler I am not fully convinced it is doing what we are told it does but I think it saves on the landfill.

If we look at all the requirements for recycling it does in fact pose a question.

First of all we need the machines to process the materials.
The machines are manufactured from ore dug from the ground.
To make the steel and other parts a huge amount of water is required and lots of transport to move the goods about.

When it comes to collecting the bins form homes we again need transport which puffs out into the atmosphere along with the gas or electricity to run the plants.

In re-cycling we provide the city council with FREE materials to make things with but we get nothing back for doing so.

I could go on but I think I have made my point and will continue to recycle no matter what.
I will continue to use my expensive water to wash the items prior to binning them and I will continue to use my electricity to shred my paper and cardboard to help reduce the size of the load.

Please do not take this as a moan about re-cycling it is not a moan at all just making a point perhaps for debate later raising the question "is recycling cost effective and does it help the planet"