Week 1 - Day 2 & some recycling stuff

Today is day 2 of my first week, so its 30 mins of brisk walking. It was sooooooo windy this morning, that I wasn't up to walking outside so I decided to do my 30 min walk on the treadmill. Its not nearly as much fun and its really hotter (no breeze/fresh air), but it really was better than walking in the howling south easter outside. All went well and I'm very happy :-)

Hmmm LOL, thats a very short entry so let me write a bit about our recycling project. Unfortunately our municipality isn't into recycling, so if we're gonna do it, we have to do things ourselves. For quite a while, we have been recycling paper (or local church has a paper igloo) and glass (there were glass igloos at the Edgemead hall - now moved to the edgemead shopping centre). Late last year, we decided that we needed to get more proactive with the recycling.

The main problem with recycling, is storing the stuff till you have enough to take to the recycling depot. We have a basket for paper and an old milk crate for the glass but that was it. So we went to a local plastic shop and bought 4 fairly large bins with lids. We use those for tin, cardboard, plastic and polystyrene. Its been going really well and we usually empty some or all of the bins once a week on a Saturday at the dump (they do recycling too) in Panorama. We also have a compost bin, into which we put all vege waste and teabags etc along with the inners of toilet rolls & cardboard egg cartons (apparently its best to do it that way). As a result, we actually put very little into our black bin for the municipal collection.

Its a great thing to do, but now that we are doing it, I find myself getting very frustrated by the amount of tins & glass & plastic bottles that lie around my neighbourhood. Often when walking back from the shop, I actually pick up these items and bring them home to recycle.

Another frustration is having to wash the items. Glass jars aren't that much of a problem and some tins are okay, but animal food tins are a hassle to wash, but if they aren't washed it causes all sorts of problems - so occasionally, I still do throw the odd animal food tin in the bin cause I simply don't feel up to trying to wash it out. I try not to do that too often though.

Seriously though, most of the time its no hassle at all and I would be really happy if many more people would start doing it. Even if you don't want to go to the expense of buying some bins, just use black bags to collect the stuff. Just start with paper and glass if you don't want to go the whole hog, but you'll be surprised at how proud it makes you feel of the fact that YOU are doing something for our world.

ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!!!