For a while now, we’ve had all our recyclables picked up together in one container in our town instead of having to separate them. Recycling plants now can separate the different types of recyclable materials from one another automatically by machine, so this must be what explains it. A magnet might be used to separate out metal, and some other machine that relies on the different densities of the different types of recyclable materials separates out paper. Probably they still have employees to manually separate the different kinds of plastic from one other, since it seems like the different kinds of plastic are too similar to one another to be separated merely by some physical, mechanical process.
Of course it’s easier on people to put everything in one barrel instead of having to separate it. But it also, encouragingly, somehow makes you think of how almost all of our garbage is recyclable now. It’s almost tempting to just put everything in the recycling container, and let the plant separate out what’s not recyclable. You really notice how you put a lot less into the trash than you did years ago. For instance my mother’s wastepaper basket in her room almost never has anything in it except paper. I realized I might as well always just dump the whole thing out into the recycling container (instead of putting the whole thing in the trash, which is what I had been usually doing)- especially after she sorts through a bunch of papers and throws a lot of things out.
This is all well and good. But one more thing it makes me think of is that maybe a good way for people to get communities and recycling plants to add more types of recycling programs, like food scrap recycling and diaper / absorbent pad recycling, and thereby get closer to achieving the goal of zero waste, would be to organize a protest day at least once or twice a year where all kinds of garbage in the recycling bins whether they are recycles in that community or not. This may or may not be a good idea, but of course people should only resort to it after a letter-writing / e-mail or phone call campaign that has very many participants.
Another waste-related idea that might do a lot to help the environment: maybe municipalities should run programs like Freecycle. Freecycle is a website that helps the environment by allowing people to search by region for donated used goods. It works a bit like online classified ads, but its scope is limited to goods being given away for free. Free used goods, of course, attract people to secondhand things better than having to pay even garage sale prices, of course, as long as the quality is the same. And a free website where people post there offers whenever they have as little as one item to give away, instead of waiting until they have enough things to hold a garage sale- or maybe never finding a new user for their old things because they don’t want to be bothered with holding a garage sale- potentially get a lot more and a greater, more useful variety of items to new owners than just garage sales would.
People might be more interested in participating if it was their municipality that ran it. It might be more convenient, too, if everything donated was dropped off in one location, like a room in city hall or another building run by the municipality, instead of people having to drive to all different places to pick up something. Also, the municipality could seek people to volunteer to refurbish donated items, so that even more things- things that were damaged or worn out- could be donated. Or, the municipality could even offer a bit of money, not necessarily a real salary, to the volunteer. Of course, municipalities with bigger freecycle programs, like very big cities, might eventually hire someone to do this full-time. Since many people don’t want to bother with doing a garage sale, this program might help them get a lot of clutter out of their houses. It might help the municipality save money by saving gas used by garbage trucks since they’ll carry less. And it would help the environment by reducing the carbon footprint since people would be buying less new products, not to mention saving these individuals money.
If only a few people try to do things like this to reuse products instead of getting new ones, it won’t help the environment much. That’s why it’s most important that a program like Freecycle spread a lot and that many people participate in it. Maybe federal money should be used to encourage municipalities to start programs.
If towns and cities can’t start freecycle programs as part of a national program or a trend, then on an even more grassroots level, people could try to get groups like schools to run a program for the town. Then maybe interest from more prominent groups like the municipality itself would follow, especially if activists don’t rest on their laurels, but remember to keep emphasizing that the program would be better and more popular if more capable groups were running it.
A way to get people more interested in and aware of electric cars- When I was a kid, a car would always be a prize in contests held at malls, on boardwalks that have amusement parks, and at annual carnivals. The car would always be sitting on display to entice people to enter the contest and maybe to draw people to the mall, boardwalk or carnival, to make the place more fun. So, electric cars should be offered as prizes in contests. This would serve the same purpose of attracting more potential customers to an event or place of business, and the additional purpose of helping the environment by showing people that an electric car is a desirable thing, or at least letting them see one for themselves, letting them see how good it can look. When people are curious about the contest, they’ll read the performance figures posted on the side of the car, and learn that electric cars work well enough.
Thanks for reading! Please talk up practical new eco-friendly practices and innovations as much as possible, and check out my other diaries.
