Five years ago, Eric and I moved into our townhome community. At that time we were shocked to find out that each of the 300+ units had a HUGE wheeled garbage can and no recycling program to be heard of. We could never imagine we could fill up that can for the weekly pickup. We rarely did, but we saw many other families with their huge cans pushed out to the end of their little carports at the end of the week almost overflowing weekly.We finally realized that the cans were so large and full because no one was taking it upon themselves to recycle. While we would still separate and sort and store up our recycling to take to one of the many nearby centers or to my parent's recycling bin which they never filled in a week, everyone else was just throwing everything away.
Now, we didn't ALWAYS recycle everything we could as I'd get sick of the piles and piles of recycling waiting for Eric to load them into the truck. I wouldn't want you to think we were THAT good. But we did give it a really good effort.
Eric talked about going to our HOA meetings for a good 4 years to see what needed to happen to get a recycling program going, but he never did. We just kept doing our part and left it at that.
Last week, I pulled our giant can to the edge of our carport for the last time. When we came home, it had been replaced by 2 brand new smaller cans. One brown for garbage and one blue for recycling. YAY!
Eric immediately cleaned up the patio of all of the recycling which had been waiting to go, and our first home pick up recycling can was full within a few hours. It felt good to pull both of those cans out to be picked up yesterday, and even better to see all of my neighbors doing the same. People will do the right thing.... as long as it's easy.
3 comments:
Yay! It reminds me of a study I heard about, where rather than lecturing to people about eating healthy, they made it easier for them to do so, made fresh fruits and veggies available. And people started eating better. You can't just lecture people, you have to make it easy, like you said. :)
Yay recycling!
Spence and I have always recycled whether we've had bins or not. here at this complex, we've got some large bins for paper and paper/glass recycling. Only problem is that there are only two bins on each side of every building for LOTS of people. As soon as the bins are empty, they are filled up again. Which means I've got bags of recycling stacking up out on the porch most of the time. At least it's something.
make that plastic/glass bin...but no place for cans! But I've discovered that there is a place within 20 min walking where I can take all the bottles and cans for CRV redemption. Stopped doing it when our regular place shut down. Very glad to see this other place, Spence gets to keep the proceeds, so he's very helpful sorting and stuff. :)
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