Rambling about Recycling

If you know me well, you know recycling is important to me. I'm not a fanatic but could be if I had time or energy, or another lifetime to campaign, apply for grants, etc.

When Keith & I were newly-marrieds back in 1969-73 we lived in beautiful upstate NY where Ulster County towns were beginning to recycle on-site at the landfills. The small towns recruited volunteers to come and sort glass and aluminum into separate bins. These removable bins were placed in permanent concrete pits in the ground. Our church youth group, with the 2 of us as their fearless leaders, would spend a Saturday a month at the local dump, literally going through garbage uncovering green, blue, and clear glass, as well as aluminum cans! I must say it was an dirty experience but we felt like we were making a difference in our small part of the world.

We moved back to NC in '74, to Raleigh briefly(no recycling), then bought a house in Cary. Cary recycled--yeh! Not enough, but it was a beginning. The town did improve their program as time passed and now has an active recycling program:) In '87 we moved to Apex, where they have followed in Cary's footsteps:)

In 2005 I began working at a small office in Raleigh, and after naively calling the City Dept. of Works to get a recycling bin, found out that businesses did not recycle:( I was shocked! Businesses are the biggest producers of trash:( So I took our recyclable items home to Apex.

I started a new job in Apex at Hallmark in 2006, a job I enjoy. You can imagine how much Hallmark ships in, countless items in countless boxes packaged in plastic and the dreaded styrofoam---ugh:( In our company's defense, I am thankful they do recycle cardboard! Hurray:) But not the styrofoam:( Styrofoam flakes, shreds, clings, sticks to everything, fills up our trashbags and the landfills and will never disintegrate:( How bad is that! We need to ban the creation of it or send it all to the sun!! I read in the N&0 recently a researcher has come up with a styrofoam that does begin to break down in 6 months---now that excites me!

Now, for the plastic bags....
And the litter along the roads....
And abandoned shopping carts in Raleigh, and so on and so on.
We are the stewards of this Earth.