Curbside recycling

Our neighborhood has recently improved its curbside recycling program. We used to have a small open green bucket to put our paper and other recyclables in; this bucked lived outside, and got put out every other week next to our giant, closed trash container. We would never remember which week was recycling, and we didn't want to keep the materials outside in the bucket to be waterlogged by rain. Therefore we rarely used the curbside recycling; I'd occasionally take our saved materials to the recycling center, but not on a regular basis.

Now we have a giant, closed container for recycling as well. It's just like our trash container, except it's bright green, and it has a handy sticker on the outside which describes what's appropriate to put in the container. It's so easy now to just toss recyclables in the container outside; much better than trying to manage them inside in the small space we can spare in the kitchen. Paper, plastic, cans, glass - it all goes in together, as soon as it's clean.

Our family tries not to have too much to recycle or dispose in the first place; the best policy is to eschew things with so much packaging. Nevertheless, we do generate trash, except now our trash container is rarely full. Instead, the recycling container has been almost full every two weeks, as we are more disciplined about putting in the newspapers, junk mail, cans, and even plastic clamshells from berry and tomato containers. I think this new program, with its bigger, closed containers and its automated pickup, must be drawing a lot of material out of the garbage stream. I'm looking forward to seeing the numbers when they're published.