Tell me about your recycling system

[aaronsmom]

Do you seperate everything or do you just throw it all in a bin that your waste management company provides for you?
If recycling isn't provided by your waste management company do you take everything to each seperate recycling area yourself?

[UUMom]

I basically throw it all in one bin...on pick up day, I sort it into the two bins. Nothing to think about excpet making sure I fold all the small cardboard stuff into a bigger cracker type box. Done. I don't have much garbage or much to recycle. We compost all food scraps or feed them to the chickens.

We have curbside pick-up now, but we used to have to take everything to the recycle place ourselves and sort there. Also easy.

[girlmama28]

We used to have to recycle ourselves at the center, so we separated most things into a couple of different bins. We moved and they pick up recycling, which we separated the first couple weeks, until we saw that they just dump everything all together into the truck. Separating made no difference, so we just throw it all into the bin.

[lovesdaffodils]

Originally Posted by aaronsmom

or do you just throw it all in a bin that your waste management company provides for you?

That one.

ETA: The recycling bin is one of the small ones that you carry, and it fits under our kitchen sink. We just keep it there and just toss everything right in. We don't have to separate our stuff here.

[Pancakes]

We have two trash cans in the kitchen, one for trash and one for recycling. About twice a week I need to dump the recycle can into the pick up bins and I just put the recycle bin out on trash day with the trash. I don't sort it since the recycle pick up people don't sort it either, but I do compact it as much as I can to save space in the bins.

[shaper]

We're in an apartment so outside we have: the giant garbage bin, the giant cardboard bin, the smaller paper bin, and then the mixed recyclables (pop cans, glass, tin, plastics, etc). We take the tetra packs/juice boxes back for deposit because there's no more convenient option for them. Laziness wins over bottle deposit every time for the rest of our drink bottles.

Inside I just have a rubbermaid bin under the sink for mixed recyclables and another in the dining room for paper (which my husband sorts out cardboard from outside).

I love, love, love apartment living for this (at least here in Victoria) and if we didn't have it, we'd still recycle even though it would be a pain with no car... but it would be very annoying and we'd probably live under a mountain of recyclables 90% of the time. It would be pretty tense

[sweetcheeks]

Right now, all of our recycling, except glass, goes into blue recycling bags we get at the store and we just throw those bags in the dumpster in the back lane w/the regular trash bags. Glass we have to take ourselves to one of the recycling depots in town. However, soon the city is getting rid of the dumpsters and each household will be getting 2 roll out bins to place in the back lane for trash pickup, one for regular trash and one for recycling. We still won't have to seperate recyclables (aside from taking out any glass).

[aaronsmom]

I've been slacking on our recycling the past couple of years : so I'm trying to figure out a good organizational system to start up again. Thanks for all the replies.

[Scribe]

I lust after these.

We have two blue city recycling bins, one for paper and one for mixed recyleables. Our city doesn't take a lot of stuff, and we should be figuring out another arrangement for it, but right now we are throwing it away.

[LilMamiBella]

We're going to start recycling. I have three small trash cans that I was planning to label: paper, plastic, and misc. I'm not sure what to do with food that we throw away. I suppose I could give it to our dogs.... Our recycling center is only about a 10 minute drive away so it won't be a big deal.

[aaronsmom]

Originally Posted by LilMamiBella

We're going to start recycling. I have three small trash cans that I was planning to label: paper, plastic, and misc. I'm not sure what to do with food that we throw away. I suppose I could give it to our dogs.... Our recycling center is only about a 10 minute drive away so it won't be a big deal.

Can you only compost fruits and veggies? What is compostable (not sure if that's even a word )?

[aaronsmom]

Originally Posted by avengingophelia

I lust after these.

Those are neato! I want them.

[JennaW]

We our spoiled. Our city provides us with a big blue can (the kind you keep outside) and all recycling goes into that, no sorting. So in the kitchen we have a trash can for trash and one for recycling. We always have more recycling then trash.

[cassiemommy]

We're spoiled, too. Now, we don't have to separate our paper recyclables from our plastics (we do plastic bags, styrofoam, anything with a recycling triangle with a number in it), but we still do out of habit. The city gives us the recycling bins that we just take out weekly on garbage day. We also started with organics last yr, too. That, IMO, is the absolute best! We don't have enough garden to have our own compost heap (the city provides those plastic composters free or for only nominal cost), so we used to save our organics and trek them over to my mother's or my sister's so that we could compost them there when we were visiting, but couldn't really do that in an "aromatically" sensitive way in the summer. Now, we can toss used tissue, bones, veggies skins, etc.etc. as organics and we end up with only 1 plastic grocery sized bag of garbage a week. Since we started to use cloth bags for groceries last summer, we ran out of those and did a couple of grocery trips without the cloth and got fully loaded with those again. Yeah, I rambled, but my BIL called us the recycling Nazis when he first married into our family !

[chinaKat]

We have single stream recycling, so it can all go into one bin. However, for *my* convenience, I put paper/cardboard in one bin, and everything else in another. It stacks more neatly and takes up less space. Then we also have a garbage can and a compost bin.

[HelloKitty]

Originally Posted by avengingophelia

I lust after these.

Those are so cool looking, I just ordered them.

Our town is really picky about what goes into what bins at the recycling center - so everything has to be sorted really well. Like clear plastics from semi clear from colored, same with glass, same with papers, etc. The way we do it now is that we have one big trash type container next to the regular trash one and we throw all the recyclables in there, then we take them to the basement and sort it once a day into individual bins.

Compostable food goes into a covered container under the sink and that gets dumped into our compost area outside every night.

[HelloKitty]

Originally Posted by aaronsmom

Can you only compost fruits and veggies? What is compostable (not sure if that's even a word )?

You can compost anything that comes from plant matter - so fruits, veggies, papers (newspaper can go right in - tougher stuff should be ripped into strips or it will take forever to compost), leaves. You don't want to compost meat or dairy - animals will get into your compost to eat it and there is a chance of contamination from that type of rotting food.

[adtake]

I have got to start recycling. The town I live in doesn't even have garbage pick up, so everything much be taken to the dump. The town next to us does have pick up, just need to find out when and if I can drop it off instead of leave on curb.

I have been really trying to 'go green' as the saying is, but something seems to be a bit more of a challenge than others.

[Jojo F.]

Our city provides us with free bins and everything must be seperated and thrown into their own bins. Only 1's, 2's, and 3's (plastic) can be recycled here which is stupid if you ask me.

Any paper that can be composted gets shredded and tossed into the bin in your backyard.

[Dar]

Our city doesn't provide recycling, although there are a few private companies that will, starting at $6 for one pick-up a month. We drop ours off, though - we live right down the street from one of the recycling centers. We sort ot there, and it doesn't take long.

We have a big plastic tote that sits on the back porch and collects everything except newspapers and big cardboard - the former get stuffed in a box that lives behind the dogfood, and the latter gets folded and stored next to the tote. We set stuff on top of the dryer when we're too lazy to take it out to the porch.

Our city does pick up yard waste and compost it, but we have a compost bin instead, and all our compostables got there.

Dar