Shek's Footprint

Home Depot has recycling containers. All kinds of sizes too! I bought a square section 30 L can for $12.00.

The city of Jacksonville would provide recycling buckets for free to its residents. They stopped that for some reason. When I moved to Riverside, I was excited to be able to recycle. People told me that I had to use brown paper bags. Even COJ would pick up waste for recycling only if it is in a marked blue bin or a brown paper bag.

I shop with a canvas bag. It seemed redundant to ask for a brown paper bag to throw away recyclables since not using is better than recycling. I started separating my recyclables from regular trash from day one in my new apartment. The first few loads were thrown with regular trash. I couldn’t find recycling bins anywhere. That till my friend spotted one at Home Depot while scouting for Bike Valet related stuff. I bought one today.

Recycling is the last stage in conservation of resources. The first is reducing consumption. I filled up my new blue bin with junk from the pseudo-recycling-trash-can. It was mostly full of dog food cans, some plastic soda bottles and two beer bottles. The plastic soda bottles are what my friend consumes when he spends time here. I mostly buy fresh produce and very little packaged produce. That keeps my consumption low.

Have you looked inside your recycling bin lately? What can you do to reduce what goes into that bin?

Burger, tater-tots, sausage and baked beans were finished off with a cool mango-pineapple smoothie from cold stone creamery. That and a movie later, I knew the ride back home from my friend’s house would be great, especially since it was past 10:30 PM. 

The roads were empty and the air was cool. Some humidity was being formed into mist as I quitely cut through it on my bicycle. The five and a half mile ride was very refreshing, probably one of my best rides at night. The sounds of frogs croaking and insects chirping was accompanied by a background score of the wind swishing by my ears. I could see the busy JT Butler Blvd through openings in the trees. Impatient cars rushed by on it while I pedaled through the misty and empty AC Skinner Rd. People do not realize how much more there is to gain by slowing down a bit. 

The unsoiled late night air got me motivated to do a little bit more in preserving its sterility. It got me thinking about the cans of dog food and plastic water bottles that I throw away. My usage of cans is two a day and if I can find a place that recycles cans, I could gather them and take them to the center. I have already talked about using a filter for water to reduce my plastic bottled water usage. Even though Zphyrhills have been making their bottles with 30% less plastic, it should still be either recycled or not used at all. 

Over the next week, I will be researching recycling centers near my apartment. Updates will be posted.