several months ago, i began recycling paper regularly in my home by gathering it in a plastic grocery bag slung on a doorknob. after a short stretch of time, i felt like a bit of a dud for not doing so sooner, realizing how much paper added up and how fast too. it really does multiply quickly, and my trash is now less and less per week. seeing the transformation in changing these habits has been so eye-opening, pecking at my perspective. the same goes for now diligently tracking cardboard into the trunk of my car for recycling. luckily, the service is free from my borough.
for the paper, i've been recycling it in a paper retriever bin at the friendship hook & ladder fire company (also called the hookies, especially by those who play bingo there, as my mom did, winning meat from freed's weekly) a few streets away. so that means it's also free, but the fire company gets some money back from the paper retriever company, which is good because of the hookies being a nonprofit emergency services place in need of donations for funding.
i've always been all about using up paper as much as possible or saving tiny scraps to the point that it drives my brother matt nuts at work when i write a note on the tiniest pinch of paper or even half of an already tiny post-it. but i feel wasteful otherwise ! at least recycling reels in less guilt then, for tossing off a scrap snippet.
matt said paper of all kinds is also collected for recycling at his children's private school, and like the fire department above, this place receives money for the gathered paper also. i think i've seen a bin at the local high school and the hereford township building too. but i love that it's free, since at least with trash disposal, there are usually fees. so this is just darn multi-purpose in saving money and also giving a little more affection toward the environment and our usable materials on the globe.
We recycle our paper at work (university department of psychology). We get a lot of slick mail-outs that no one is really interested in and of course, we use a lot of white copy paper (which we are trying to use less and less!). I've often thought how I should be doing it at home too.
ReplyDeletei think retriever bins are all around. google them under images to see if you recognize them-- they are free to drop off tree-slices in whenever you want. maybe one is near you, and you can test out recycling at home. it's almost eerie what a difference it makes, once you see the piling up of just paper, separately.
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