Recycling Is So Easy...So Why Aren't People Doing It?

Today at the office, I pulled 2 plastic water bottles, 1 soda can, a couple of small, light-weight cardboard boxes and at leasst 5 lbs of paper out of the trash...and this was just from 3 of about 20 trash cans in the building. It made me mad. My reaction was inappropriately strident. I know I over-reacted. But it's just so frustrating.

Every week I take all the non-paper recyclables from my office and put them in the container at our house for curbside pickup. I take the paper to the Abitibi collection bins in the parking lot at the local school. Serving as the self-appointed in-house recycle fanatic is a role I have willingly taken on. Once in a while, if I ask, someone will take the paper for me, or take the cans and bottles home to his or her bin. But the general lack of interest on the part of many of my co-workers is starting to get depressing. Even with a bin for paper right next to the waste can, some of them till drop their unwanted paper in the trash!

Is this a trend? Are people tired of the recycling message? Is it worth the effort? Are we experiencing "recycling fatigue.?

The statistics aren't too encouraging. According to BevNet, a beverage industry website, the recycling rate for plastic water containers was 30.9% in 2008, a 32% increase over the 2007 rate. So, even with a major growth in recycling rates, nearly 70% of the water bottles didn't get recycled!

An article on Waste Age, notes that Americans recycled 54 billion aluminum cans in 2007, representing 53.8% of the cans that that were sold. Am I guilty of looking at the can half empty if I  ask about the the 50 billion cans that weren't recycled?

An EPA report says that 28.1% of glass was recycled in the U.S. in 2007, which is mostly attributed to mandatory glass recycling (deposit bottles) in 11 states. So, it appears that about 70% of glass bottles are not recycled.

There is some encouraging news. A news item on RedGreenandBlue, a website that covers environmental politics, reports that in 2009 San Francisco recycled 72% of its municipal solid waste. The city even requires that construction debris be recycled. Seattle had increased its recycling levels to 50% by 2008. And the island of Nantucket recycled at an incredible 90% in 2007.

Unfortunately, most communities are stuck at the 25 to 30% level, or worse. Low prices and diminished markets for the recyclables are adversely affecting municipal and private recycling programs. But why would that translate into individual lack of participation?

Can you shed some light on this? Are you experiencing recycle burn-out? Please share.

Getting Creative with Coffee Grounds

Everyday - more or less 365 days a year - we brew a pot of coffee. And when we clean up, we throw away the coffee grinds. Well, not exactly throw away. Mostly we throw them in the composter. Sometimes, I'll take them outside and spread them around the hydrangeas (the grounds increase the acidity of the soil and make the blue hydrangeas bluer).

Mrs. Greene, at My Zero Waste, recently posted a list of other uses for coffee grinds created by the Impact and Sustainability manager of Cafedirect..  Here are some of them  (I particularly like the cat repellent suggestion!):

1. Eco Exfoliant - apply grounds and massage your skin; then rinse.
2. Hair Rinse - use leftover coffee as a final hair rinse for dark hair for extra shine
3. Slug Repellent - scatter coffee grounds around the base of plants to keep slugs away
4. Cat Repellent - mix coffee grounds with orange and lemon peels and scatter in the garden where cats are a problem. They will hate the smell.
5. Odor Control - use a bowl of grounds in the freezer to soak up bad smells; rub coffee grounds on your hands after cutting up onions and garlic to neutralize the odor
6. Furniture Care - remove small scratches on furniture with wet coffee grounds
7. Grow Mushrooms - moist used coffee grounds can be used as a medium for home-grown mushrooms
8. Ant Deterrent - apparently the critters won't cross a line of coffee grounds
9. Potted Plant Food - add a little coffee grounds to indoor plants to increase acidity of the potting soil. Just don't over do it.

  Any additions to the list? Please share.

Know Your Carbon Footprint

In case you want to know more about what a carbon footprint  is, and why it's important to know your own, here's a terrific explanation.

No More Wasted Food

Every year,  millions of tons of trash goes into the waste stream.  While the over-
whelming amount is paper (up to 40%), a disturbing 7.5% is food waste.  Jonathon Bloom blogs brilliantly on the topic of the world-wide issue of wasted food, and what people can do and are doing about it. He states that over 40% of the food produced for consumption in the United States - over $100 billion worth -  is wasted every year.

The problem is worse than rotting food resources and squandered money. Once your over-ripe apples, unwanted leftover lasagna and wilted lettuce leaves have joined the discarded coffee grinds, potato peelings and stale bread in your garbage can, and have found their way to a landfill, it can take only 28 days for the garbage to decompose, creating methane gas as a by-product. Methane is about 20 times more efficient than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere, making it a major contributor to global warming.

Until more landfills are equipped to trap the escaping methane and convert it to fuel, keeping food waste from entering the waste stream in the first place is a front-line tactic for improving the world's environmental health.

Here are some easy steps you can take:

1. Only buy as much food as you will actually consume. Simple, right? But how many times have you bought fruit or vegetables that have turned into brown mush in the fridge? Planning your shopping lists to more closely match your meal plans will help you avoid wasting food - and save you money.
2. Freeze leftovers and other foods as soon as you realize that you won't be able to eat them before they go bad.
3. Find alternative uses for foods that aren't useful in their present form. For example, make bread crumbs from stale bread; bake apples that are not as firm as you would like for eating raw; make rice pudding or stuffed peppers with leftover rice; make a big pot of soup with odds and ends of vegetables, leftover pasta, rice and beans; dry citrus fruit skins for pot pourri; make pickles from watermelon rinds.
4. Make stock or broth from meat bones.
5. Cut out the bruised, soft or unattractive parts of vegetables and fruits and use them up rather than throw them out.
6. Offer potato, carrot and apple peelings, wilted lettuce, kale stems and other vegetable remains to a friend or neighbor who raises chickens.
7. Compost all your organic kitchen waste (except oils, grease, meat and dairy products). The photo above is of my stainless steel kitchen composter whch I use to collect kitchen waste. When it's full, we empty it into the big compost bin the yard. The kitchen composter, which has a carbon filter so it doesn't get smelly) is available from CleanAirGardening (they also have a bamboo version), WilliamsSonoma, Crate & Barrel, Sur la Table and Target, among other vendors.

Even city dwellers can compost their organic kitchen waste. No Impact Man Colin Bevin uses a worm composter he keeps under his kitchen sink. And many New York City citizens take their kitchen waste to the City's Green Markets where the Sanitation Department collects it in big bins.

If you're not quite ready to do your own composting, a subject we'll talk about again, find out if one of your neighbors has a bin and is willing to accept your contributions. Or look into community composting. In the mean time, I'm challening you to make an effort to waste less food. Tell me what you are doing/will do to meet this challenge.

To Market, To Market

I love market bags. All kinds. And I use them just about everyday...when I go to the farmer's market, the CSA, grocery or drug store, to haul files, to carry my knitting or sewing, to bring home recyclables from the office or committee meetings. Sometimes I'll use one as an overnight bag when I make a quick visit to NYC to visit my daughters.

I always have at least five or six bags in the trunk of my car. And I keep one in my hand bag - usually a small, fold-up one like the Baggu bag made of parachute fabric http://baggubag.com/#Shop that was a party favor from a museum benefit or, more recently, the cute red and white flowered envirosax  http://www.envirosax.com/graphic-series/flora-series/flora-bag-1.html  that my sister-in-law Beth gave me for Christmas. Another favorite is an old blue plaid Burberry bag that sometimes doubles as a casual purse.

Even when I did some holiday shopping at Marshall's and Old Navy, I toted my tote bags. A few clerks seemed not to understand that I really didn't want my purchases put in plastic bags, and proceeded to do just that even after I said "I have my own bag, thank you." But the sales woman at a local cookery ware store thanked me for not taking a store bag.

The SuperFresh grocery store, where I frequently shop, encourages customers to bring their own bags by offering a 2 cent credit per bag, although I have to remind the clerks to punch the rebate into the register. The nearby Giant grocery store doesn't offer a rebate, but they do seem to sell a lot of their own reusable bags.

Leah Ingram wrote extensively about bag rebates in one of her Suddenly Frugal posts      http://www.suddenlyfrugal.com/2009/02/reusable-shopping-bag-savings-going-down-the-drain/ I wish more stores would offer rebates, or at the very least ask customers if they would prefer to use their own bags. Do you regularly carry a reusable market tote? What is your favorite?