Re-cycling-am I the only one still doing it?

[Arlene Gaona]

Well, we pay for our town to have private garbage dudes picking up our recycling. We pay, we talk about being 'green' and should be showing our kids by example.

 The other day I put mine out...paper in one container and plastic, glass and aluminum in another. Then much later had to drive a bunch of teens home from the movies.(the reason I include this is all the recycling should have been out by then)
 As I drove down my block of 102 houses I noticed about 6 recycling containers out!
I remember when everyone, or just about everyone, on the block recycled. I am a first owner and I don't know if it was peer pressure because we all knew each other or if it was pride in new home ownership or what. But, it is a shame and a waste of money and WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH ALL THE STUFF THAT SHOULD BE RECYCLED???
Done ranting...
thank you
arlene

[James_Mazetta]

Well we still do but I have noticd lots of people don't anymore. Seems to be less and less people re-cycle as time goes by. It is a shame but guess people don't care and just throw it in the garbage. Our daughter lives in an apartment complex in Jackson and they don't supply anything there to help people re-cycle but she does and brings it to us every 2 weeks. I know it is harder in these apartment complexes but some do. Guess people were just throwing anything into the re-cycle bins so they stopped.
Maybe people don't know it is FREE, yes FREE to re-cycle.

[Mary_Caprio]

I got tired of picking up the recycling from my front lawn and chasing my containers down the street after the stuff got thrown everywhere. So now I just drive over to the recycling center every couple of weeks and drop everything off. There are always people coming and going, so apparently others are doing the same.

[Jody_Branin]

Also - since they changed the dates of recycling, people get mixed up and forget which week it's supposed to go out.  I have my calendar marked "R" every 2 weeks where it used to be the 2nd and 4th Tuesday's of the month.  If I forget to mark it on my calendar, I forget to put them out.

Don't forget to remove the caps from all the screw top plastics!
http://samgoesgreen.blogspot.com/2009/02/recycle-plastic-bottle-caps-separately.html

[Elaine_Kerslake]

Arlene, I still put mine out. Mine was probably the ones you saw out on the street. I do admit though that my can(s) (i used to put out 2 large cans) has less in it. With one kid off to college and the other 2 off on their activities and social engagements there's less used to put out, so i'm down to 1 can almost full.

[Arlene Gaona]

thanks guys for restoring my faith in Howell .  And Hawk, I really commend your daughter in the apt complex  8-)
I wonder how we could get more on the bandwagon. Since the town is paying whether they do it or not.

[Sue_Veitengruber]

People should remember that the recycling grants are based on the Town's total tonage. So by recycling you are actually helping to bring revenue into the Township.

Also, I believe the Monmouth County Landfill also has a sorting operation, whereby the garbage goes down a conveyer belt  and recyclables are reclaimed before the garbage is compacted and buried. However, it is much more efficient to have the individual households recycle.

[Ginger_Hoffmeier]

We take  our stuff to the town dump once or twice a week. Boxes flattened, and plastic bottles and jugs, mixed papers, and tin cans. It's just as easy as driving it to the roadside for pickup.

Recycling is not as 'green' as some think and probably never was. When there is no market for used paper and plastic it goes in with the regular junk. When the economy was better people didn't mind paying more for 'recycled' goods.

Recycled paper was always a bit of a farce anyway. It made us feel good but less than 10% of the stuff actually gets recycled. The process and chemicals used to clean the ink off the used paper left bleach, acids, and heavy metal deposits in great quantity and no one knows where that went. In some Canadian companies it just gets dumped in a river.

Of course, we don't need the amount of paper we use. And all those plastic water bottles are the result of us killing the wells and aquifers here. No one wants to mention this because to restrict much of it would cost jobs. That's no longer the case. The jobs are all gone to China or Mexico anyway. Only the junk remains. Of course, if you look in your mail you will notice that more than half is junk and if we didn't have this a lot of postal employees would be out of work. Look in your frig and notice all the plastic bottles and cans?

The 'recycling experts' of an earlier decade predicted that jobs would evolve from the need for recycled goods and new companies would be born. It never happened. No one got rich making piggy banks from old Clorox bottles. Even the companies that claim to recycle only use a small amount of used materials.

Look just at what comes in the mail box on a daily basis. Most of this is printed in another country, on coated paper stock using four (or more) inks that contain dangerous substances in their inks. How much milk do you go through, and how many water bottles do you use? What about computers, electronic games and appliances?

Sam's Club is 'helping the environment' by not packing stuff in bags. But notice how many layers of plastic and printed paper we have left after a trip to Sam's?

Many people in Howell fought one of the best options available -- incineration. Not the old incinerators that were nothing more than a huge barrel of flames and a chimney -- but the modern ones that use higher heat, and scrubbers that render the air leaving the burn chambers cleaner than the ambient air blocks away. Besides producing power, the end result is an inert substance that hardens like concrete and can be used for road beds.

The truth is that we would rather  bury garbage so we don't see it. It's a silent killer as it leaches into our underground water supplies and emerging gases smell like someone 'cut the cheese.'  (The liners do leak!) Or we pay to ship it to another state at higher and higher costs.

Monmouth County had the opportunity to replace the landfill with a state of the art incinerator but since no one had a clue they went off with torches and pitchforks denouncing it. The same Howell political hack who led that charge later tried to convince the county to allow a restaurant waste composting facility in the same section of Howell that she now is  trying to keep the MAC athletic center out of!

We can better help by reusing items. Don't be so quick to buy new clothes or appliances. The jobs that will be lost are probably in China or another nation. The sales jobs lost don't pay much more than farm labor or landscaping. Instead of selling shoes, pick peaches.