At least not in central PA. If you want to recycle, you have to save it all up and haul it to a collection center yourself (how I miss the convenient roadside pick-up of my youth!).
But that's not the worst of it - the recycler is very specific about what they will and will not take, and employ a recycling Nazi to make sure you follow the rules. And some of the rules are ridiculous.
For example, I know it's important to keep plastics sorted by type, but within type - #1 plastic is #1 plastic, whether it's shaped like a pop bottle, an egg carton, or a rectangular box that had held pre-washed salad. It can all be mixed together. But our local recycler only takes #1 plastic in the shape of pop bottles. The Nazi goes through and checks the bins and will use one of those little extendo-gripper thingys to pull out anything not shaped like a bottle.
Why, you may ask? I'm pretty sure it's because the recycler doesn't trust people to sort their plastics, so it's easiest for their employee to only have to look for one shape - anything not that shape is thus summarily dismissed, even though it's really perfectly good, recyclable #1 plastic.
Because I am a consientious recycler who does take the time to check the number and sort my plastic, this irritates me to no end. Especially since we live in an area hard hit by unemployment thanks to factories that fled overseas, I don't understand why you'd pay only one guy to pull out things that are truly recyclable, when instead you could pay several people to work at the recycling plant, sorting through and pulling out what is NOT truly recyclable.
Of course, this has turned me into a rogue recycler. If it's #1, I still take it and wait until the Nazi's not looking, then dump it in the bin. If he pulls it out later, it's on his conscience, but at least I made an attempt to recycle it.
My other great frustration for the past couple of months has been trying to properly dispose of a burned out CFL. First I took it back to Lowe's, thinking since they sell the things they must have a way to dispose of them. Nope. In fact, the young punk working the lighting aisle told me to just throw it away.
"But they have mercury in them," I said.
"Not that much, it's not a big deal," he replied.
"If everybody throws them away, then it BECOMES a big deal."
He just shrugged and walked away from the crazy environmentalist before I could indoctrinate him any further.
Today I tried taking it to the hospital's home health services store (suggested by someone at church). It was a good impulse - thinking if they'll take back mercury thermometers, maybe they'll take mercury-containing lightbulbs. But no such luck. And again, looked at me like I was crazy, wondered why I wouldn't just throw it away.
So I'm still stuck with this stupid bulb. But I guess I'm not alone - tonight msn.com had an article about the difficulties with properly disopsing of CFLs, and how even state officials that should be in control of such things will give people incorrect information. Sigh - what's a conscientious rogue recycler to do?
Seriously, if anybody has any ideas of where I should try next, I'm open to suggestions.
In other news, though the ELCA kindly sent me my very own hard copy of the sexuality study, it's now Holy Week, I'm still recovering from a case of the crud, and my dad and stepmom are arriving any minute for a week-long visit, so I won't have anything more to say on the matter for at least a couple of weeks. But thanks to everyone who commented on the last post -
we'll pick up the discussion after Easter!
Peace,
Catrina
2 comments:
I know it's not all that close, but around here IKEA will take them.
Thanks, Melissa! Gotta love those environmentally conscious Swedes - I don't know why I didn't think of them sooner! The closest IKEA out here is 3 hours away, but Dad and Brenda drove, so guess what's now going in the box of stuff that they are taking back to MN? :)
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