General Rants

[MitchM]

Recycling facilities are in another town for us, so we accumulate cardboard, milk cartons and electronic waste until we have a truckload then take it all in at once. (maybe every 6 months)
For regular organic garbage, we use an outside composter for non smelly stuff and a worm composter located in our greenhouse for stuff that could attract bears. Those worms can eat a lot!
For all other garbage that can't be composted, we have a 3 cubic yard bear proof dumpster that gets emptied once a year.
It's amazing how little garbage you really have to send to the municipal dump, if you try.
Composting and recycling does take an effort though.

 

[sissy]

Here our recycle is similar to mitch's we take it to the dump and there are different dumpsters .I go once a week and have to be careful because you leave it around for long you attract animals of all kinds .I rinse and cut out both ends of cans and put the lids inside the cans and crush the cans down on the lids and I also remove the paper label .I don't buy soda or canned drinks .We like home brewed iced tea .

 

[MitchM]

We try to avoid metal cans as much as possible because of the BPA coatings inside.
We consider the balance though, we buy wild cooked salmon in cans because we think the health benefits of the salmon outweigh the health risks of the BPA.
http://www.bisphenol-a.org/human/epoxycan.html

We preserve as many local vegetables in glass sealers for the winter as we have room for.. We also avoid buying vegetables from Mexico or China.

.

 

[sissy]

I try to buy frozen veggies but with all the warnings lately of food safety it makes you think twice .I canned all the time back in NJ because of my big garden and the fertile soil .I added lots of leaf mulch to it and covered it with a tarp .Here the soil is not the best and even mulching leaves for the yard does not help .With the well and the heat and lack of rain here during growing season it is not worth the cost .I grow enough for just us during growing season .My poor last watermelon did not make it .Eggplants do good here

 

[peter hillman]

Recycling facilities are in another town for us, so we accumulate cardboard, milk cartons and electronic waste until we have a truckload then take it all in at once. (maybe every 6 months)
For regular organic garbage, we use an outside composter for non smelly stuff and a worm composter located in our greenhouse for stuff that could attract bears. Those worms can eat a lot!
For all other garbage that can't be composted, we have a 3 cubic yard bear proof dumpster that gets emptied once a year.
It's amazing how little garbage you really have to send to the municipal dump, if you try.
Composting and recycling does take an effort though.

My mom really tries, her goal is zero waste. Composting, recycling, and being vegan her food waste is nill. When they returned from Germany two years ago they couldn't stop talking about their garbage society, they don't throw away anything!! My mother was changed, my father impressed. Thus the new goal. I usually take care of the garbage duties but a few weeks ago I got to work late and the wife brought the cans in, unfortunately the garbage bin hadn't been emptied yet, it was so light she didn't notice.

 

[peter hillman]

Ok, our recyclables get a 100 mile ride to Sacramento for manually sorting, then the rejected waste gets an additional ride back, past home, on the way to the landfill. Somebody's making a living off it.

 

[MitchM]

.... Somebody's making a living off it.

Truck drivers by the sounds of it.

 

[mgmine]

My complaint is that the town charges to dump things like tires and old electronics. What that does is promote dumping of those items along the road. Then they put up a sign that tells you not to take any metal out of the scrap pile. Every week there are plenty of really good items in the metal pile. Things that could be put back in use like lawn mowers, power washers, table saws or at least parts of those items could be reused.

 

[Lisak1]

@mgmine - I'm sure they're concerned about people climbing around in that scrap pile and getting hurt and then suing.

We pay our own trash bill, but our village contracts with the trash hauler so we get no say in who we pay. They started this 25 years ago when recycling was just starting and they had a trash company agree to provide a recycling program if they could have the whole village on contract. Now everyone provides recycling but we are stuck with whoever our village decides to award the contract to - no competition in that system!

 

[sissy]

I burn some paper and all the stuff that can be shredded goes into my garden and it really helps with my root plants .I plant potato's and beets and sweet potato's and radish's love the nice loose soil from the paper

 

[addy1]

We have big blue recycle containers, dump everything in, not real garbage, and they sort it somewhere, every other week. Our yuck garbage is a tiny bag once a week. We pay for collection being out of the city, the yuck garbage not the recycle that is free.

 

[j.w]

We use the neighbors big blue bin for our recycle and we take our small bag of garbage to an un-named garbage can every week if even that. We can choose here if we want curb garbage p.u or not. We have so little that it would be dumb to order service. I am a very good recycler that's why we have so little.

 

[addy1]

We split the cost with our neighbors, the company doesn't know it, makes it cheap. One can that we all fill

 

[sissy]

Saw they are going to put the Dick Van Dyke Show in tonight in color

 

[mgmine]

Saw they are going to put the Dick Van Dyke Show in tonight in color

I remember when they sold a plastic sheet with three colors on it. You put it on your television screen and got color TV!