Monday, July 7, 2008

Curbside recycling for dummies

Unlike folks in most urban areas, recycling is considered optional around here, and is not included in most communities' trash service. This is not surprising considering that a good many folks either don't have a trash service or privately contract with their service of choice, so outside of town or community borders, on a single block there may be six different trash services pick up during the week.

A year or two ago they started a fee-based curbside recycling program, but I didn't bother signing up. For one thing, you needed to keep four separate containers and only set certain ones out on certain days, and that was just too complex for me; it was easier to just bring stuff to the recycling center myself. Also, I thought it was really expensive - $36 a month.

Since a few months ago they switched the recycling centers over so that all you had to separate out was corrugated cardboard and old batteries and everything else could be dumped together, I figured that they might have also done the same with the curbside recycling. Finally tonight I checked, and not only did I find that I was right about now just needing a single bin, I was also seriously wrong about the cost. It wasn't $36 a month, it was $36 for six months. Buh-DOY!!!!

So we're now signed up. It's not that I minded going to the recycling center, but I never managed to go often enough to keep things from seriously piling up in here. Now I can just dump the stuff outside in the Big Can, and take it to the curb every other week.

1 comment:

Connie said...

How nice. We have only just recently gotten a recycling program here that takes aluminum cans and newspaper. Nothing else.