I do not want to admit it; but I will. I have not been very good at recycling at home. In fact, I have been downright terrible. I hardly ever use my recycling container.
How can I run one of the largest cell phone recycling programs of its kind and still possess a high degree of Recycling Apathy at my house? This must change!
My catchy phrase that I have used as an excuse for years is: “I care; but I just don’t care enough” to recycle. What is most interesting, as I look inside myself, is that I really never even tried to recycle at home. I always felt like it was a hassle to sort out my trash. I even got on my high horse and thought to myself, “I help to recycle thousands and thousands of cell phones – I am doing my part!” But, you know what? I have discovered that recycling at home is just as easy as taking out the trash. Yes, that is my personal recycling at the end of my driveway from this week.
How to make recycling at home a permanent habit
1. Find one thing to recycle today and put it in your recycling container. Make it easy – like a newspaper or a plastic water bottle or milk jug or an aluminum can(s). For me, just getting started was easy enough to help me make this a new habit in my life.
2. Make it a fun, family project to look in your fridge and see what numbers are on your plastic bottles. In our community recycling program – Deffenbaugh’s Curbside Recycling, we can recycle plastics numbered 1 through 7. [What do those plastic recycling codes mean?]
3. Locate your most convenient recycling resources. Everyone lives near a school or church that has either a paper, glass, or multi-recycling container. Our glass recycler is a huge Ripple Glass purple container that is only 6/10 of a mile from my house. It takes me 1 minute to get there. Here is the Ripple Glass locator map to see where you can recycle your glass.
4. You might already be paying for it; so put it to use. I am charged a mandatory recycling fee of $5.10 on my trash invoice for three months of unlimited curbside recycling. I feel like I have a personal recycling butler come to my house once a week, take away all the stuff that can be recycled, and I only have to pay him 42 cents per week.
5. Educate yourself on everything that can be recycled in your community. Here is the list, in pdf format, of everything that Deffenbaugh Recycling accepts in their curbside recycling program.
6. Do it again next week…and the next…and the next…
