For the Religious Recyclers

[RidentMama]

Okay, we recycle a little bit, I have three bins set up in back, one for glass (which should really be three bins, divided into green/brown/clear), one for newspaper and one for glossy paper. That's about as far as my recycling setup has gone. Have you created a setup at your home and, if so, how well does it work and how is it laid out? I need convenience here so DH is encouraged to chuck stuff in the appropriate place rather than in the garbage. Ideas please!

[Elphaba]

well, we just moved to Germany and we are required by law to recycle!
So we are REALLY good about it, because we want to respect our host-nation.
We have a trash can for all the stuff that CAN'T be recycled -- cat litter, scrapings from pans, etc.
We have one bag for all paper stuff and that gets taken out to a dumpster specifically for paper and it gets sorted out somewhere down the line.
Then we are given clear plastic bags with twist ties for plastics of all kinds, as well as any cans, and any other packaging materials. These clear bags are picked up once a week.
We have been AMAZED at how little actual garbage we have now that we are forced to recycle.
We are getting plastic bins though for the paper recyclables and a tall basket for the misc. recyclables just so the bag isn't so free-form.

[fayking]

i throw all the recycling into a couple of big boxes...alltogether except the paper/card. i when have to take it all to the recycling place i just sort it out when i get there. the paper goes to a different place so thats why i keep it seperate. i would love to have a different box/place for each type of recycling but i only have a tiny house so little room.

many parts of the uk have great recycling schemes where they give you a big bin for all your recycling and collect it every week or so. but where i live they collect nothing and all the recycling places are overflowing

[magemom]

Our local town sorts at the center- we toss it all in a big bin. We have the largest family on the block and every week have the least amount of trash and need another recycle bin.
I used to have brown papaer bags in the bin for each kind.

What I have discovered is the more I recycle, the less I bring IN, so the reduce is working as well.

[BusyMommy]

Oooh, I have an awesome system. Anal as I am.
I ordered a bunch of recycling bins from the Container Store
http://www.containerstore.com/browse...ml?CATID=70654
and I have the bins stacked on my deck in 2 columns.

I've found that unless it's totally handy and accessible, I won't do it. THen, when the bins are full, I load them up and take them to the recy. center. I have a bin for each of the recy. bins there. So, I just drive through and unload at each bin.

It's actually pretty fun as it's always busy there and I love seeing all those recycling nuts.

[PikkuMyy]

We have a small garbage bin next to our regular garbage can (both very small) just for glass/plastic/aluminum. When this gets full, we have a large bin from the container store in our covered garage that we empty it into. It takes several weeks to fill.

We keep a paper bag behind the kichen door (it's always open because it leads to our bedroom) for paper recycling.

Compost gets thrown into the pile outside. There is a wire mesh waste can in the livingroom that I put all dry garbage in. All wet/messy garbage goes into that small kitchen garbage can (lined with biodegradable liners ).

With this system, we only fill our garbage can and recycling bin(large one outside) every few weeks, and thus can save our lazy @sses from having to drag them up the long driveway and getting them in the morning. Unfortunately, we have to pay for weekly garbage pickup even when we only put it out every 2-3 weeks.

[michelle1k]

I think I am the recycling queen

Our recycling gets picked up every two weeks. We have a large rubbermaid tub for mixed glass, plastic, tetra-pak cartons, juice and soymilk cartons and aluminum and this takes about two weeks to fill. We flatten cardboard boxes and place them in another blue tub. Magazines and catalogs get dumped in a square box and when full, it gets emptied, the stack cross-tied and taken to the curb on recycling day. Newspapers are usually kept for starting fires (balled up, in a brown paper bag) or used for mulch in the garden (we only get junk-mail newspapers) and packing material. Office and other papers (brown, construction, etc.) get balled up and thrown into a wicker waste-basket and this gets emptied every two weeks and put in a paper bag for recycling. Gray cardboad (i.e. cereal boxes) gets flattened and pushed into the space behind the wicker waste-basket and the wall and then put into a plastic bag on recycling day. Foam chips get bundled into plastic bags and taken to the post office or UPS store every once in a while. Used batteries are added to a metal cookie tin which will be taken to the toxic waste part of the local recycling station when full (we haven't yet had to empty it in the 5 years we've been here). We are vegan, so we compost all food scraps (even oily ones); our compost turns out fine regardless and we consider ourselves lazy composters (hardly turning that pile at all!) Ditto for our cellulose sponges - I cut them up into small squares and compost them.

So really, we take about two weeks or more to fill a bag of garbage... mostly it's little plastic packaging bits that can't be recycled, soiled brown paper, unidentifyable "nasties" from the floor after sweeping up, the contents of our vacuum cannister and I was going to add dryer lint, but lately I've been turning those into home-made fire-starters so that doesn't go in the garbage either anymore.

Confessions: only unsoiled aluminum is supposed to be recycled so I always just crumple up the icky bits and toss it in the garbage. But thinking about it, perhaps I should just give it a quick wash and then recycle it. Also, we toss our used tissues in the garbage... it makes me feel icky to think about composting them. We have a septic, so I could flush them, but don't want to add unnecessary strain to our system...

Warmly,
Michelle in NY

[BusyMommy]

dryer lint,

Another idea for this is worm composting. The worms love it.

[PapayaVagina]

I suck at organizing. Our recycling company will only give us a teeny tiny little bin that only holds about 2 bags worth of stuff in it (the "community" voted out the bigger bins-ugh!) and they refuse to use my red garbage cans marked "RECYCLING" because they might mistake it for garbage LOL. Usually my garage consists of bags of glass, bags of paper, bags of paper that needs to be shredded first (I'm an identity theft freak), milk cartons in our stacker unit, foil and cans thrown everywhere, styrofoam stacked on top of whever it lands when I open the garage door and throw it out, and brown bags nicely folded up in my apple crate. I also have one of the plastic bag holders in my kitchen that is usually jammed full and overflowing. We have piles upon piles upon piles of plastic bags in our garage also (they have to wait until we go to the grocery store, which is the only place that I know of that will take any kind of plastic bag) and cardboard thrown all over the floor (our recycling lady gets pissy when we put out too much at one time).

[RidentMama]

I'm gleaning a lot of good ideas here! Keep 'em coming!

Oh, doula4women: I was having the same problem with plastic bags. I found out that one of the Value Villages here (a local thrift store) sells canvas bags for 69 cents each. Most of them have logos on them, but I sure appreciate those more than the innumerable clutter of all the plastic bags I was getting.

[LaffNowCryLater]

In my city we have those big huge trash cans on wheels, and they also give us a big blue one for recyclables (not on of those teeny blue bins). We just toss the stuff outside in the can as we go.