Recycle!

I hate throwing away things that can be recycled.  I hate how much garbage we can produce in a day and I hate knowing that a lot of the things that fill our trashcan can easily be recycled.  But for the past year I didn't recycle. Our neighborhood doesn't have a recycling program nor does it have a recycling center nearby.  So day after day I threw away our juice bottles, our metal cans, and our paper and cardboard.  Shameful.  I know.  So I decided to change.  

Deussen Park

For the past few weeks I have been collecting all of our recyclables.  I had a bag for plastics, a bag for metal cans and aluminum, a bag for all our plastic grocery bags (which I never did throw away, instead I periodically took them back to the grocery store for recycling), and a bag for paper and cardboard.  I told myself that I would find the nearest recycling center and I would drive there with a car full of trash and sort it out myself.  So after these few weeks, when our small kitchen was being overtaken by recyclables, we loaded it all into the van and set out to find the recycling center.

Troy had gotten directions from Google maps and we set off.  When we got to the place where the map said it should be, we were disappointed to find that it wasn't there.  We drove around a bit more, checking out the surrounding area and found a nice park and recreation area.  We decided that we needed more help and used our mobile shout out to call our sister-in-law Nicole for better directions.  With the new directions in hand we set out again, confident that we would find it.  After about an hour of driving, we gave up.  We still couldn't find it.  But we did get rid of our recyclables.  We sorted them at the local (where we were at the time) middle school.  After all the emissions we generated, our good deed of recycling hardly made up for it.  But don't fear.  We are not deterred.  We are still going to collect our recyclables and give it another shot.  Maybe we'll have better luck finding another recycling center.  

The main reason that we go though so much trouble to do these things is because we want our children to be good stewards of the Earth.  We want them to grow up thinking that recycling is something that you just naturally do.  In order for that to happen, we have to do it.  Our actions speak louder than our words sometimes.  My children will grow up thinking that cloth diapers are normal, that cloth napkins are normal, and they may not even know what a paper towel is. They will hopefully grow up with the great habit of recycling.  And I love that idea.  

Don't let other dinosaurs suffer a similar fate!  Recycle!!