waste not, want not.
wendyNot long ago my seven-year-old daughter raised her concern with me about recycling. They had discussed it at her school. I assured her that we recycle in our household and I showed her where to put empty bottles and old newspapers. That satisfied her but it left me wondering how we could do even more. The city gives advice about recycling in Tampa. It’s from the Solid Waste Department and I am following the suggestions.
Still I am bothered with the amount of garbage that a three person household can generate. How much worse is it in larger households? I have realized that it’s not enough to simply recycle when you can. We need to cut down on the amount of packaging we use to begin with. The Solid Waste Department says that 40% of the waste stream is discarded packaging. The time to think about conservation in this area is while you are shopping. It’s not easy to break old habits but little by little I am working on it.
For example, we no longer buy boxed juice. All those little individual boxes of juice create mountains of garbage. We buy frozen concentrate and mix it up in reusable containers. Do I miss the convenience? Only a little. I’m working on the buying-in-bulk thing too. I would love to know about local websites that address greening your average household. I’m not talking about moving into a yurt or growing my own vegetables, but it strikes me that there are lots of simple ways to conserve that would be easy to incorporate into our lifestyle.
So send me some suggestions or links and in the meantime, if you see a short-haired brunette whizzing about in a new red Prius, that would be me. This week I have greened up my garage too.
Tags: environment, for you, tampa
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August 15th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Good for you, girl. So proud!
August 15th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
A few years ago the recycling service for our neighborhood was stopped because of “lack of demand”. I found it very strange to suddenly be faced with the whole idea of actually throwing away cans, bottles and newspapers. After living 12 years in Gainesville, where recyling is standard, I just couldn’t bring myself to dump everything in the trash.
I live in Largo (have been here for 10 years now), and for the first year or so, I would take the cans and bottles to nearby recycling containers at a park near my house.
Then the county removed the containers, saying there was little demand for them. I found that surprising, because the containers were usually full when I stopped by to drop them off. Sometimes the stuff was overflowing, messing up the parking lot at the park as well.
We are left with no other option except to throw away our cans unless we want to locate one of those companies that will pay for scrap aluminum.
The church near me accepts newspapers for recyling, but the rest of the trash, such as the plastic milk jugs and the glass bottles are all heading straight to the landfill.
How backward is that?!
August 15th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
I live in Winter Haven and I guess they gave up on the recycling too. I had moved into my house and put the garbage in one pile and the recycling in the bin that had been left by the previous owner. Unfortunately, they took everything into the main truck, INCLUDING THE BIN! No more recycling for me.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
This makes me wonder, at various times I have been told that since the incinerator that Tampa uses generate electricity and supposedly emits relatively “clean” emissions that is better than recycling. Does anybody know if this is just industry bullshit or if it has any basis in fact?
August 16th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
I believe that they pull out anything that can be recycled before it hits the incinerator. If trash ends up there then everything is great but I think that a lot of trash still goes directly to a landfill. So I would say recycling couldn’t hurt.