It Isn't Easy Being Green
So, obviously moving a household full of furniture generates a lot of waste. Before our move, our helpful, friendly Allied mover supplied us with a basement full of boxes as well as pretty new newsprint paper for all our boxing needs. We had bags full of peanuts from our wedding presents and we scraped together rolls of bubble wrap--some new, some used. Upon arrival in our brand not-so-new home (but looking newer every day now), we had a lot of trash. Oh yeah. Now, I'm not an environmental person by any means of the imagination. I drive alone when I could take the bus (or, now, the T). I don't print on both sides of the page. And I've never even thought about hugging a tree.
But recycling? Well, they make that pretty easy for you don't they? In Massachusetts, they even give you back 5 cents for every can or glass you bring back to the store (digression: what ever happened to the cents key on the keyboard? It used to be there, once upon a time, didn't it? Are cents that obsolete that they don't even rate the tiny spot above the numbers? Who did it lose out to?). Or, you can do what I did, which is go to town hall and pick up a pretty blue tin for all your plastic-glass-tin recycling needs (which is what we'll continue to do unless I get really desperate in the job hunt and find that getting my deposit back is an economic necessity). While at town hall, I picked up this nifty little pamphlet that explained all our recycling needs. Happily, curbside recycling will pick everything up (just like curbside garbage--they will pick up anything! We left out five bags, three cans, a shoe rack, a metal file cabinet, and a bathroom sink [really!], and they took it all. Their only condition is that you call for major appliances because they send around a different truck. No wonder our taxes are so high. Hey, is it pathetic that I'm reduced to blogging about my garbage?]. But there are requirements around recycling. All cardboard had to be bundled up in stacks no more than 30 inches. So we bundled. And bundled. And bundled. We had about six stacks of cardboard. We put all our paper into paper bags. To be especially green, we took our Styrofoam peanuts (how many folks know that Styrofoam is a trademarked word and therefore must be capped? I know this because the lovely people at Dow Chemical wrote me a nice letter attesting to this fact when I was a production editor for a series of mystery books in which the word "Styrofoam" appeared in the lowercase) and bubble wrap to our local mail company for reuse. We are the coolest of the non-cool recyclers.
Or so we thought. "Hey," I said to Adam, "no one else has recycling out." We checked our calendar three times, and yes, indeed, today was our recycling day. Which means none of our neighbors recycle. Dorothy, I don't think you're in Seattle anymore.
I wake up around 7:30 this morning to the sound of a truck outside. I'm pleased because the mess in our front yard is a good 10 feet long and a bit of an embarrassment. Yet, when I peer out the window, our garbage is gone... along with our myriad stacks of cardboard. Our lonE blue box of cans remains. Those garbage people--the same garbage people who were the saints last week for taking the bathroom sink--are now idiots who trashed our beautiful recycling. An hour later the recycling truck comes and sweeps off our cans/bottles/plastic. Ugh. Even my non-green heart feels blue over that one. Those beautiful trees sitting in a landfill. Adam and I consoled ourselves by saying to each other, "Do you think, maybe, the garbage truck picks up the paper recycling? Maybe the recycling truck can't handle it? Yeah, that must be it." Yeah, I'm sure that's it.
[Side note: I think all my desires for writing come from my grandfather, Poppy, who used to be an avid reader of New Yorker (although he was always chronically behind, because he read them in their entireity and he was quite slow; I mean that entirely in the physical, not intellectual sense, as he was a very clever man), was constantly writing and submitting bon mots to local papers. He used to type everything up, and I have his old typewriter, an Olympia, that I'm guessing is from the late '60s or early '70s. Anyway, I'm checking out the keyboard and the cents key is on the lowercase of the @ key, next to the colon/semi-colon key. It's where you're " and ' key is now. Back then, the quote sign was on top of the two and there was no "1" key, because the "l" key served the same purpose. There are plenty of other differences, but it's pointless to go into them here.]
Not Poppy's, but the same model. Click on it to see the keys.
But recycling? Well, they make that pretty easy for you don't they? In Massachusetts, they even give you back 5 cents for every can or glass you bring back to the store (digression: what ever happened to the cents key on the keyboard? It used to be there, once upon a time, didn't it? Are cents that obsolete that they don't even rate the tiny spot above the numbers? Who did it lose out to?). Or, you can do what I did, which is go to town hall and pick up a pretty blue tin for all your plastic-glass-tin recycling needs (which is what we'll continue to do unless I get really desperate in the job hunt and find that getting my deposit back is an economic necessity). While at town hall, I picked up this nifty little pamphlet that explained all our recycling needs. Happily, curbside recycling will pick everything up (just like curbside garbage--they will pick up anything! We left out five bags, three cans, a shoe rack, a metal file cabinet, and a bathroom sink [really!], and they took it all. Their only condition is that you call for major appliances because they send around a different truck. No wonder our taxes are so high. Hey, is it pathetic that I'm reduced to blogging about my garbage?]. But there are requirements around recycling. All cardboard had to be bundled up in stacks no more than 30 inches. So we bundled. And bundled. And bundled. We had about six stacks of cardboard. We put all our paper into paper bags. To be especially green, we took our Styrofoam peanuts (how many folks know that Styrofoam is a trademarked word and therefore must be capped? I know this because the lovely people at Dow Chemical wrote me a nice letter attesting to this fact when I was a production editor for a series of mystery books in which the word "Styrofoam" appeared in the lowercase) and bubble wrap to our local mail company for reuse. We are the coolest of the non-cool recyclers.
Or so we thought. "Hey," I said to Adam, "no one else has recycling out." We checked our calendar three times, and yes, indeed, today was our recycling day. Which means none of our neighbors recycle. Dorothy, I don't think you're in Seattle anymore.
I wake up around 7:30 this morning to the sound of a truck outside. I'm pleased because the mess in our front yard is a good 10 feet long and a bit of an embarrassment. Yet, when I peer out the window, our garbage is gone... along with our myriad stacks of cardboard. Our lonE blue box of cans remains. Those garbage people--the same garbage people who were the saints last week for taking the bathroom sink--are now idiots who trashed our beautiful recycling. An hour later the recycling truck comes and sweeps off our cans/bottles/plastic. Ugh. Even my non-green heart feels blue over that one. Those beautiful trees sitting in a landfill. Adam and I consoled ourselves by saying to each other, "Do you think, maybe, the garbage truck picks up the paper recycling? Maybe the recycling truck can't handle it? Yeah, that must be it." Yeah, I'm sure that's it.
[Side note: I think all my desires for writing come from my grandfather, Poppy, who used to be an avid reader of New Yorker (although he was always chronically behind, because he read them in their entireity and he was quite slow; I mean that entirely in the physical, not intellectual sense, as he was a very clever man), was constantly writing and submitting bon mots to local papers. He used to type everything up, and I have his old typewriter, an Olympia, that I'm guessing is from the late '60s or early '70s. Anyway, I'm checking out the keyboard and the cents key is on the lowercase of the @ key, next to the colon/semi-colon key. It's where you're " and ' key is now. Back then, the quote sign was on top of the two and there was no "1" key, because the "l" key served the same purpose. There are plenty of other differences, but it's pointless to go into them here.]
Not Poppy's, but the same model. Click on it to see the keys.
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