How do you recycle?

[2much2luv]

Ok,I admit it, we rarely recycle. :o I need help with figuring out an inexpensive way to store recyclables. We have a very small home, a teeny tiny kitchen, and nowhere to put any containers. I like the looks of those tall stacked bins but sooo expensive. We tried big plastic rubbermaid boxes outside but with the lids, having to take them off...it seemed a bit of a hassle. I'm afraid to do open boxes outside with no lids because animals might make a mess of it.
So anyway, how do you do it? Give me your ideas, if you got any. :)

[tboroson]

Hi! We are lucky enough to live near a private recycling facility that takes almost everything; Unfortunately, that means we're drowning in recyclables if we don't go every week. What we did is bought two large, attractive, inexpensive wicker laundry bins from Pier One. One is for all kinds of paper, the other is for everything else. We rarely have trouble with the paper one overflowing, but we do end up with bags of everything else that won't fit into the baskets sometimes. When it starts to overflow, we sort it out by plastic number and glass color and type of metal, etc, into paper grocery bags and stash all those out in the garage until we can get to the recycling center. The baskets are very nice looking in our kitchen, and by sorting all the recyclables at home we save a lot of time at the recycling center.

[Meiri]

Since recycling is mandated by law in our state, the municipality supplied us with A bin for them. I collect the glass and plastics and cans in a plastic grocery bag, then DS takes them down to the bin, which goes out every 2 weeks.

The garbage collection is supposed to be doing newspapers again, but I don't trust them any more. I bag our papers and other recyclable papers in paper grocery bags and take them to the bins setup by PA Cleanways. They collect just about any kind of paper except corrigated cardboard. I keep my brown paper bags until they wear out, then they go into the bins too.

I mostly use cloth bags for the groceries, and recycle the plastic ones in the store bins.

[chamonix]

You should go ahead and try the outside bins with no lids. We have bins from the city, just tubs really with no lids (just like the Rubbermaid tubs). Since you rinse everything, the animals do not ever bother with the recyclables at all...and we have lots of critters out there. They mess with everything else--they get into our garbage cans every night unless we secure the lids, they eat our bird seed, etc. I once saw a possom gnawing on dh's bike helmet when he left it outside! Our garbage cans are right next to the open recycle bins, but the possoms, raccoons, squirrels, etc. have never ever bothered the recyclables. Just be sure to rinse the cans out. Especially the stinky ones like cat food.
I can't stand to have the recycle stuff in the house all week until garbage day, and since there is a door to the outside right in the kitchen, we just throw the cans right out the door and into the bins once we rinse them. Try it, really. You might be surprised.

[melaniewb]

Yep, our city also supplies us with a bin, and they pick up weekly, which is great. I just put the items throughout the day in a paper bag and toss it in the recycling bin at the end of the day.

[doulamomvicki]

We have curbside recycling here. My 10yr old is in charge of sorting and bagging. He also thinks up real creative ways to reuse things that would otherwise be tossed.

[EmeraldStar8]

* double post.

[EmeraldStar8]

We to have curbside recycyling over here. I live in a block of 5 townhouses, so our block were supplied with 2 wheelie bins which go out weekly.

I don't use plastic bags when i do my grocery shopping, i use calico bags. My plastic yoghurt pottles and other plastic pottles i keep in a big box under the stairs along with a box for anything cardboard including toilet tubes, cracker boxes, catfood boxes.

I have a can opener which leaves smooth edges, so i keep some can's to decorate and store small items in, such as pencils/pens, spare change.

My magazines and junk mail i use for collages and arty things for my boy. Cards also get recycled here for arty things

Squeezy bottles i find uses for including paint and other things.

[boycrazy]

Originally posted by melaniewb
Yep, our city also supplies us with a bin, and they pick up weekly, which is great. I just put the items throughout the day in a paper bag and toss it in the recycling bin at the end of the day.

pretty much same here

[MamaMonica]

curbside here, too- we just separate the glass. We rent the giant bin for a small fee- I think $1.50 a month. The bin has a lid and we store it next to the trash can outdoors.

[lilmiss'mama]

We put 3 paper bags in the hall closet right off the kitchen. one for glass, cans, and plastic, one for newspaper, and one for all other paper. We rinse the food containers out well and then putting everything in the bags. On trash day we take them outside and put them in the small bin the city gives you.

[Ilaria]

We have curbside recycling too.
They give us a big trsahcan for the street and a small square bucket thing for inside. We keep it in the laundry room and when it's full we empty it into the big one outside, all together.

[anythingelse]

We try to re use first more then put it out in the recycle

we have dumpster divers that have discovered pop cans in the neighbors recycle bins so now I am going through a wierd mental thing (since I know our trash is getting looked through) about not recycling any paper with personal info on it:o that is turing into shreds for composting

[Cranberry]

We have curbside recycling with a bin provided by the town. We recycle so much that our bin was overflowing by the time it was picked up (every 2 weeks). So we bought a Rubbermaid 30-gallon trash barrel and we fill that up with our plastic and glass stuff. We recycle as much as possible. :thumb

[Bippity]

We have a wicker basket that's probably.... 3-4 feet tall & 24" around that we stuffed into a corner in our kitchen. We put everything we can recycle into that bin and then when it's full (like every week) DH divides it all up into boxes & takes the boxes to the recycling center. Fortunately, we have a great recycling program that takes just about everything.

We also have curbside recycling, but we don't trust 'em to do it very well & the only take a few things - they don't take nearly as much of a variety of stuff as the recycling center.

It still amazes me how much garbage makes its way into our house (both recyclable and non)!

[LDSmomma6]

We don't. Kinda sad, but it's to much work.

[momadance]

We have a huge black ugly ACO garbage can sittingg out kitchen and a small green one for paper goods. When they are full we have to drive 15-20 minutes away to the sounty recycling center! Big pain in the booty, but after all the hassle, we sure do feel good about ourselves!:D

[2much2luv]

Sounds like maybe throwing it all into a big ol trashcan and sorting through it as needed will be the best way for us. I tell you , our kitchen is so small there isn't a corner to sit a basket in. Its like a closet. :LOL
Thanks for you r tips. I wish we had curbside pick up here. The recycle center here doesn't even take everything. Any ideas on what I can do with "thin" cardboard...like mac n cheese boxes type stuff? We eat out of a box way too often and they don't take those boxes.
Thanks again. recycling starts today! :thumb I have been so lazy about it. I just need to get off my duff and do it.

[Ilaria]

I'm impressed by everyone who has to sort it and drive it to the recycling center! If only everyone was that caring! :thumb

[SaveTheWild]

Originally posted by LDSmomma6
We don't. Kinda sad, but it's to much work.

It really isn't much work. I think it is just whether you think of it as that or not. People "sort" all sorts of other things and don't think twice about it. People sort their laundry to wash it, sort it to put it away (socks in one place, sweaters somewhere else), people sort their groceries when they put them away (cans in one place, sereal in another) and sort all kinds of other things.

It is just a matter of making it seem as "normal" as every other kind of sorting you do. In fact, as far as taking actions to lessen ones personal detrimental impact on the environment, it is one of the easier things that people can do.

:hippie

Oh, and to answer to OP. We keep buckets in the garage. One for glass, one for tin/aluminum and plastic (in our city those are sorted together for some reason), newspaper and mixed "other" paper. We rinse the stuff out as we are cleaning up/doing dished and put them right out there right then. When those get full we take them out to the big bins that are used by our condo complex.

[shelbean91]

I guess we're really lucky. We don't have to sort anything. We have a black barrel that goes to the curb on Sat and a blue barrel for recycling that goes out on Wed. They (the city) also gave us a small (13 or 20 gal) container for inside the house. When the small container is full, we dump to the big blue barrel in the garage, then take out on recycle day. We rinse before putting in the container, but even that's not totally necessary. They even have printed on the side of the containers what is recyclable and whats not (which plastics, etc.)

[vegmom]

I did not read every post here but I am a recycling fanatic. We recycle everything.
When living in an apartment in the chicago suburbs we did not have recycling pickup. What we did was have a recycling closet and every month or month and a half we would sort everything and take it down in my truck and drive 45min to the closest recycling facility. Dh luckily supported this.

Now we have recycling pick up every two weeks and we still end up only setting out the recycling once a month. Everything just gets piled in the garage and we sort it once a month a set it out to the curb.

The trick here is that the recycling has to be clean so it does not get stinky.

[famousmockngbrd]

We have a big cardboard box that everything except glass goes into. The glass just sits around on the counter until I get sick of looking at it and take it out to the recycling bin outside. :rolleyes: We have curbside recycling too, and the only thing we have to sort out is the glass (lucky us). And even then some people STILL don't do it (like my Mom!) I always get mad when I drive down the street on garbage day and see people with their garbage cans overflowing and no recycling bin out on the side of the road. :angry It is no harder to throw it in the bin than it is to throw it in the trash, people!!

[darsmama]

Thank you for the great ideas! This is why I love MDC!!!

[UnschoolnMa]

We are very big on recycling. Well, Dh wasn't but he is coming around lol. We have bins supplied by the city. One is for glass, and the other for paper/cardboard/plastic/foil etc. We only have to seperate colored glass from the clear kind. It's really easy. We keep our bins outside near the garage, or sometimes in the garage.

[liawbh]

The recycle center here doesn't even take everything. Any ideas on what I can do with "thin" cardboard...like mac n cheese boxes type stuff? We eat out of a box way too often and they don't take those boxes.

OUr curbside won't take paper or paperboard (thin cardboard). THe recycling center says they don't take it either, but when we went, the people working there said it's OK in with the corrugated cardboard/paper bags.

[JenniferH]

The only thing we can recycle locally is aluminum cans. I just went today and walked the rural roads picking up drink cans. People are just throwing money out the window! Right now cans are selling for .50 per lb.

We have a scrapmetal place that buys cans, but nowhere to recycle plastic, glass or paper locally. I wish we had the .05 refund on bottles....I'd be a millionaire! I couldn't believe the number of beer bottles that were tossed out.

I may pick them up anyway and send them to work with my husband. He works in Memphis and I'm sure he could find a place to take them up there.

What I did was buy two big garbage cans with locking lids and put them outside my back door. I rinse and crush cans inside and hang a small grocery bag on my kitchen doorknob. When it's full I dump it in the garbage can out back. When those are full they will go to the scrap yard. I estimate that one of those cans can hold about 35 lbs, but I'm not sure. Guess I'll have to weigh it to find out.

[Irishmommy]

Moving this to Mindful Home Management...

[UUMom]

Our town has limited curbside recycling. They will take cans, glass bottles and number 1 & 2 plastic. They also take new paper separetly, but we no longer take the papers, as we read on line. I have a bin in my kitchen for these items. When it's full, I transfer it to the town bin I keep in the garage.

Other items, such as cardboard boxes, & cardboard food boxes, like cereal boxes etc are taken by us once or twice a month to a nearby city recycle center. I keep that stuff in a small bin under my sink. I can flatten up the smaller annie's shells boxes, fi, so that they fit in the larger one. It's amazing what i can cram in there. Our recycle center says the same as another poster--put them in with the corrugated cardboard.

Magazines and fancy catalogs either get donated to the library and/or Goodwill or Savers. What my library does not want, mag wise, they save to sell at books sales. I do the same with books & videos we no longer need. I drop this stuff into one of our flat-bottomed canvass library bags that sits by the door. we go to the library every week, so it doesn't pile up too badly.

We use old mail, as long as it's not glossy paper, as starters in our fireplace, which we put in with our woold in a large basket by our firplace.

All egg cartons are saved to bring back to the farm, where they wash and reuse them. I keep those in a plastic bag under my sink as well.

We have a small composter in the yard (got from the town cheaply). All non -animal scraps go there.

As for outgrown clothing, I have a couple of bags in my hall closet. One is for family friends. one is for donations. Whey they are full, i put them in my car. When I see the friends/family, I unload the bag on them. If I drive by Goodwill or Savers, I drop it off.

I have another bag in my closet for consignment stuff, and I have my ebay stuff in my old 'hope chest' in my room. lol

None of it takes up too much room as it's dispersed through the house. :LOL

[greenmansions]

We have curbside recycling. Small bin in our kitchen under the sink that gets emptied into the big municipal bin they gave us. They take most paper and lots of the lower-numbered plastics.

They are adding curbside composting in the next month or so - we will be getting a big yard waste bin that we can throw almost any compostable materials in including paper products and our kitchen waste. That is way cool.

When I lived in Chicago our condo building did very little recycling - just the basic newpaper and aluminum cans. I used to haul all my other paper including magazines into work and recycle it there.

[AngelBee]

:notes:

[pilesoflaundry]

We are supplied with a bin by the city and we have to bag them in number 2 plastic bags (like the ones from the grocery store or target) so I just reuse the bags from when I go shopping. I hang a bag on the kitchen door and when it's full take it out to the bin. We don't have to seperate anything here so I fill up a bag really quick! Just rinse everything and you won't have a problem with animals or bugs.

[Ravin]

Mixed recyclables go into cardboard box just outside the door in the garage. Food goes down disposal. Everything else goes in trash. Mixed recyclables get put out Thursday night in big blue bin for pickup Friday morning, other trash ditto in big black bin Monday night for Tuesday pickup.

We just moved. Prior to that we were in an apartment complex that didn't recycle and I admit my lazy self didn't take the stuff down to the neighborhood center. But now that it's easy I'm thrilled to do it. :thumb

[MonieMama]

We have a great curbside recycling program, so it's very easy for us to recycle! We have a paper sack in the kitchen closet and one in DH's upstairs office. When those fill up, we empty them into our plastic recycling bin outside. It gets picked up every 2 weeks and has cut back considerably on our trash. About 2/3 of our total garbage is recyclable...so it feels good to be doing that rather than filling up a landfill.

[IdentityCrisisMama]

We have like 8 different types of recycling. We have curbside plastic & metal, compost and garbage. I take glass, paper. There’s other stuff too like batteries, hazardous waste and etc.

It's not hard and you get used to it anyway.

With the things I have to bring, I just put them in a big container and separate them when I get there. That seems to be the best thing for us.

I also recommend calling your city to be sure you’re not missing out on some collection service.