Recycling away from home

I have a new good habit that K is not at all happy with. I bring home recyclable goods. Had a can of soup at work? Clean the can and bring it home for the recycle bin. Sure, that Starbucks tastes good, but should the plastic cup it came in just get tossed in a landfill? Nope. Bring it home and recycle it.

Of course, I wouldn't need to do that if businesses were able to use the same recycling process that residential folks get. But of course, it's not they don't. At least most don't.

So, I have a bag in one of my drawers were my recycled goods go. Paper with unclassified information. Plastics. Aluminum cans. Glass containers. It's all going home with me.

K tells me I'm bringing home trash. I tell her that I'm saving it from the trash. She rolls her eyes and mutters under her breath a bit. I can make out the word "trash" and some less family friendly verbiage.

Imagine if everyone did this. Just recycling the things they used each day outside the home. The container your sandwich came in to the lid to your drink. Now picture that one out of 5000 would pick up the random piece that someone else left behind. A can here and there. We would have so much less trash going down into the land fill. And maybe - just maybe we'd keep the recycle processing plants busy enough that they would actually expand the program to accept new materials.

I may not be able to compost and I don't have any land immediately available for urban gardening, but I'm going to do everything I can to reduce how much is going into the trash can at home - and at work.