Is Recycling the BEST Option?

[ChickensRDinos]

I love this thread! When I was first married (29 years ago) I did everything myself.....canning, freezing, sewing clothes for our 3 boys, home cooking from scratch, etc. I didn't realized what an anomaly that was until my husbands family terrorized me for being so unsophisticated. I vividly remember the first Thanksgiving dinner I made for his family. My MIL wanted to know what stuffing mix I used ( I didn't even know you could buy stuffing mix!), where I bought the pies ( I made them), and then she looked at me with disdain and asked me if I milked the f$&?@& cow, too. I was mortified and devastated. I, obviously, was not as "cultured" as that clan. Once my kids were older, I got away from some of that way of living....other than cooking....I have ALWAYS been a home-cooking-from-scratch kind of girl. Now that my boys are married and off on their own, I feel like I've come full-circle. I have a huge organic garden, chickens for meat and eggs, cows are coming next month, I'm sewing and quilting again. When I realized that my new DILs don't even know how to cut up a whole chicken, I decided that I didn't want all this to be a lost way of living. I am slowly teaching them to cook and sew, and my future grandchildren will have access to learning everything I know about whole living at the farm. It's not only about reduce, reuse, recycle.....we must also pass on the knowledge that we glean from this life. Society is so far removed from so much of this. I thank God every day for the skills that were passed on to me!

Sounds to me like she is jealous. Don't ever be embarrassed for having knowledge. You are fabulous.

 

[OldGuy43]

Thank you.

I'm not saying it's easy, but it doesn't have to be expensive. My first real sewing project was to replace the zipper in a favorite pair of jeans. The zipper came with instructions and I did it with a needle, thread and a thimble. Total cost was under $5.00, and they lasted another 5 years if you count the time they spent as cutoffs. It wasn't until later that I found out, from other people that "installing a zipper is hard!" even with a sewing machine. Been sewing without a machine ever since. You never know until you try.

The same is true of cooking. You don't have to have a huge fancy kitchen with all of the latest gizmos. Many years ago (over 30 now) when OldGal and I first got together we cooked a complete Thanksgiving dinner for 20+ people complete with both a turkey, a ham, and all the trimmings. We lived in a tiny apartment, and the so-called "kitchen" was about 8' x 5' and included a 4 burner range with oven, a small sink and a "dorm room" size refrigerator. Since I wanted everything to be ready at the same time we used the neighbor's oven to roast the ham. Guests had to bring there own plates and silverware or use paper because we didn't have enough, of course. The apartment was so small that everyone had to eat off the hoods of cars in the parking lot, but everyone had a good time. Total cost, under $75.00. How did we get away with it? Cause we didn't know we "couldn't".

My point here is not to brag, but to point out that you can always come up with excuses for not doing something. We need to do less recycling, and more making do with what we have. Sure, there will be failures, but at least you tried.

And yes, I love the posts that show stuff that folks have re-purposed.

 

[mom'sfolly]

OldGuy, I volunteer at the Round Rock Area Serving Center: it has won green business awards. I volunteer there because the primary mission is an emergency food pantry that serves my community. But, I love the place because of how they do other aspects of their mission. They get food that is expiring from local groceries and coffee shops and give it away to those in need. Bread that has gone past the use by date gets composted and feeds the garden, which provides for the pantry. Used clothing and household items are sold in two stores, that fund the food programs. The unsellable clothing gets sold in bulk to another charity, unsellable blankets and coats go to the homeless, unsellable towels go to the animal shelter, other things we can't use are passed on to other charities. It is reusing and recycling at its best in my opinion.

I think we have become too much of a disposable culture. We've become a society that thinks paying once for something that lasts a long time is worse than buying many shoddy goods. And in many cases, even expensive goods do not last long. Also, the more complicated a device is, the harder it becomes to repair. I love to visit historic re-enactment sites. Any reasonably intelligent person can look at an 1850's sawmill and figure out how the mechanics work....what drives the gears, moves the saws, moves the logs, etc. I might not be able to tell you how to make new gears in that sawmill, but I could probably install one. No one can simply look at a cell phone and tell how it functions, much less figure out what is needed to fix it.

 

[oldrooster]

In the US recycling programs are different state by state. In California, as part of normal trash fees we are issued three bins -- trash, green waste, and recycling. The different kinds of recycling are sorted at the plant. I think this is fairly common in a lot of states. Some are more individual, especially in more rural areas, and I know Delaware just has one bin and all recycling is sorted out of the trash for everyone at a facility. But, Delaware is very small state.

There are also certain programs like CRV (California redemption value) which is a tax on metal cans and other recyclable drink packaging. You have to pay that extra tax when you buy those things and you can individually decide to bring the cans to a recycling center to get that CRV back in full. This also varies by state. In CA it is just a little more than the value of the metal by weight but the cans must be not crushed and you have sit and feed them into a machine one at a time. You can also take them to a by-weight facility and will get less money but it is much faster to process and you can crush the cans for storage. I know some cities around me are also starting to outlaw disposable plastic shopping bags.



I thought of this thread because I got an email today from a urban community garden group offering Victory Garden classes for only $15. I think this is wonderful. The problem that I see with a lot of food growing program is access. It is very urban where I live and very poor. Backyards and even balconies are rare. Nutrion education is very low and home ec skills are barely there. What is practical for some is not for others. What things all people can realistic participate in is something that I am very interested in as an urban farmer. What changes can be made that are low to no cost and practical but will have an impact? Like car and bike sharing programs, for example.

My local city has curbside recylcling but it's in one tub every other week for homes only apartments and buisnesses are not allowed to use the city recycleing services or even pay for the right at an aditional charge. but if I do it since I live in the county I have to lug it 6-8 miles from where I work 16-18 miles from where I live to a station to do it only on certain days and times. So guess what I try to cut down on my waste and just trash it because I don't want to waste the gas and have a stinky car to make it worth my while. you may ask why stinky, it's because I pay a hauler to haul off my garbage and if I haul the cans glass and such off I would have to haul my trash to the transfer station also to try to break even (ran the math when I was hauling the stuff over there and came about even some months I would save a a few months when I figure the price of the "special bags" that are required and the gas. I decided to quit the station when gas went up overr a dollar and a half more than I was spending before.

 

[duckinnut]

I agree with you 100% OldGuy . I try to re-purpose as many things as I can. More or less grew up with that in my grandparents way of doing things. They came to this country back in the early 1920s, back when things weren't good. There wasn't a whole lot of jobs,cash and food so you made do with what you had. My grandmother never had a paying job but the woman worked tirelessly. She made her own dresses,aprons,curtains and hemmed a many a pair of pants for me (cuz I got short legs but average height,anyway). The cut off part she would keep until the knees wore out and then became patches. Stale bread became bread crumbs, she canned vegetables from my grandfathers garden, made her own pasta, didn't own a coffee maker, made it with a tea strainer and a pan of boiling water. When her dresses and aprons wore out they became rags or my grandfather would cut them into strips to tie up the tomatoes or pole beans. As far as gardening goes my grandfather had a compost pile before people knew what one was. He hardly ever bought seeds for anything flowers or veggies. He told me to always grow some out for the seeds,a practice I use today. Makes sense to me, why pay for them when you have about a million seeds at your fingertips.

Having spent most of my adult life in the waste handling industry can only say "recycling" is a costly adventure. While there is a market for some materials and some none. And the costs of all those trucks to pick up different things, ouch! What one truck used to handle now takes many 3,4,5,6,7........ Trash,recycle,whitegood,yard waste,bulk items on and on. Not to mention how many times recycled stuff is handled from curb to new product and the energy to do so. Before I get off on a tangent about this I will stop. But must say recycling is good for the economy as it creates many jobs in different ways but tough to determine its net gain overall.

But I am on Team OldGuy, reuse, re-purpose idea. Even if you use just one time for something other than its intended purpose we are all better off.

The blue boards are lap board that came from a friends neighbors house.

Bucket came from the trash

A feeder made from PVC pipe from a dumpster

Not that I need to tell you all what this is but use it to start my seeds, it acts like a little green house. Use a couple 12 counts ones, 2 18 count and 1 24 count. On my 3rd year using them

There are other things I have reused but I will spare you.

Hey Old Guy kind of forgot about those jelly jar/glasses but I am willing to bet there are some still in my mothers cabinet or somewhere in her house. I actually have one here that my DW bought about 8/10 years ago at the store, thinking one brand was trying to bring them back.

 

[Stumpy]

I hear what you are saying -- recycling is not cost-effective for the most part. It doesn't pay for itself. I live in a rural county where there is no recycling. For a while I separated different types of plastics and glass and hauled it 50 miles to the nearest recycler, but it was too much of a hassle.

I have those jelly jars/glasses and reuse them, in addition to reusing the paraffin wax. I love finding a second use for things. Nothing that is usable goes in the trash here; even magazines go to the thrift store for resale.

 

[OldGuy43]

While I'm not a big fan of government control we need to insist that packaging be re-purposable as opposed to recyclable. Those of you who are older remember when fruits and vegetables came in mesh bags, not plastic.



Re-useable for sure. When I was a kid we used to take the finer meshed ones, cut them down to size and thread a string through the mesh to make a drawstring and use them to carry our marbles (Do little boys even play marbles anymore?) and "stuff". Little boys always had stuff back than. Pretty rocks, dead beetles, bits of string..., but I digress.

While on the subject of kids; They're great at re-purposing. Right after Christmas we used to go all around the neighborhood and pick up all of the discarded Christmas trees, haul them to a big empty lot and build "Forts". We got about a month worth of fun out of them until our dads decided that they were a fire hazard.

Anyway, more food for thought. It's time for me let someone else have a turn.

 

[kuntrygirl]

While I'm not a big fan of government control we need to insist that packaging be re-purposable as opposed to recyclable. Those of you who are older remember when fruits and vegetables came in mesh bags, not plastic. Re-useable for sure. When I was a kid we used to take the finer meshed ones, cut them down to size and thread a string through the mesh to make a drawstring and use them to carry our marbles (Do little boys even play marbles anymore?) and "stuff". Little boys always had stuff back than. Pretty rocks, dead beetles, bits of string..., but I digress. While on the subject of kids; They're great at re-purposing. Right after Christmas we used to go all around the neighborhood and pick up all of the discarded Christmas trees, haul them to a big empty lot and build "Forts". We got about a month worth of fun out of them until our dads decided that they were a fire hazard. Anyway, more food for thought. It's time for me let someone else have a turn.

I love those!! I use those as pot scrubbers and they work GREAT !!!!!!

 

[Chic-n-farmer]

Just wanted to share a quick story:

When a friend cleaned out her grandmother's house, after she passed, she found a box labeled:

String Too Short To Use


Grandma apparently saved everything!

I am touched every time I think of this story.

 

[oldrooster]

While I'm not a big fan of government control we need to insist that packaging be re-purposable as opposed to recyclable. Those of you who are older remember when fruits and vegetables came in mesh bags, not plastic.



Re-useable for sure. When I was a kid we used to take the finer meshed ones, cut them down to size and thread a string through the mesh to make a drawstring and use them to carry our marbles (Do little boys even play marbles anymore?) and "stuff". Little boys always had stuff back than. Pretty rocks, dead beetles, bits of string..., but I digress.

While on the subject of kids; They're great at re-purposing. Right after Christmas we used to go all around the neighborhood and pick up all of the discarded Christmas trees, haul them to a big empty lot and build "Forts". We got about a month worth of fun out of them until our dads decided that they were a fire hazard.

Anyway, more food for thought. It's time for me let someone else have a turn.

In the area I live we have eddible mushrooms if you know what to look for (there is some poisonus ones if you don't know but that's another story) and it was a common question about this time of year that people ask have/seen/heard about someone finding mushrooms. And if the answer was yes you'd grab one of those mesh bags and went hunting for them and take them home and prep them and cook them. People are having a hard time finding wild mushrooms now and some people blame hunters using plastic bags that won't let the seed spores fall freely to the ground like a paper or mesh bag would.