Some years ago, there was a comedy. Might have been a take off of Candid Camera. They put about eight bins out of a guy's house, and then had a comic instruct the home owner what goes into which bin. The confusion and bewilderment was really comical. I sense we have reached such a point in society as a whole.
One auto repair garage near me (well, thinking some more, can think of a second one) burns waste motor oil for heat in the winter. I get my oil changes there. On the rare moments I have waste oil, I do bring it there when the jug is full.
- . Christopher A. Young learn more about Jesus .
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complicated things that don't qualify as e-waste, some food wastes that i would like to compost, but Ma will not, plastics that don't fit our recycler qualifications (like many others our recycler will not take styrofoam or food wrappers or many other wrappers).
as for many organic materials and yard wastes that others throw out or use curb recycling here i either put them through the worm bins or they get buried in a garden. bones eventually get broken down, or just bury them deep enough and the worms and soil creatures will work at them through time. in the older days you could crush or grind the bones up for use in the gardens or as chicken grit. food/veggie scraps all go to the worm bins eventually (i might dry some first because i don't want them sprouting and growing later).
we have some friends in the city who bring us their leaves, wood ashes and whatever else they want to get rid of that is an organic material. this helps us a lot in our many gardens so we give them stuff back in the form of jams or produce and they can also reuse the leaf bags several times before we also bury those in the garden. cardboard layers work well as smothering for weeds. plastic coated cardboards i recycle at the curb, i don't want plastics in the gardens.
all paper stuffs are used as weed barriers or are shredded and composted with the worms.
i've emptied my wastebasket in my room here one or twice a year and often it it mostly fuzz from frayed carpet samples that i use to slide the worm buckets around on (instead of scraping up the wood floor).
i do have e-waste to recycle from time to time and batteries from gadgets.
most the trash going out here as trash is often from projects Ma is working on with fabrics and i don't want to end up with stuff not rotting so i just let it all go. even if i know cottons or other natural fibers will rot eventually, i don't want to deal with sorting it out or trying to get her to do it. once in a while i'll put an old shirt in the ground to give added fill, but i seem to keep finding threads that do not rot so i don't like to do that much any more.
songbird
Stormin Mormon wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 21:10:19 -0400:
My kid wanted me to help her win a free t-shirt at a local earth day event, where I had to take a bin of trash and play basketball, putting each item in the right bin.
Of course, I failed a few times, but eventually I won her the t shirt.
I hope she appreciates it.
Malcom Mal Reynolds wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 16:31:14 -0700:
Good observation!
We don't have cats or dogs, but I wonder why cat litter isn't just compost. Certainly the refuse part of it is normal compost.
What's cat litter made out of anyway?
I suspect it would be perfect for compost.
Perhaps it is considered a biohazard.
well i have a pretty big compost pile of branches, grass and leaves. our community encouraged compost piles...
then we got a neighborhood rat problem a neighbor shot and killed 60 rats. allegheny county sent a investigator because we have the compost pile the community pushed.
i had a very unfriendly argument with the allegheny county rat expert, he was rude and offensive, and blamed the rat problem on my compost pile of grass clippings, weeds, lots of leaves, all natural stuff.
if i ever talk with him again i will record his rants, and he deserves to be fired for how he talks to people.
now i have had dogs for over 20 years, my dog susie was a mouser. if it moved she would catch and kill it. i felt bad when she caught 2 full grown rabbits..........
well she died at age 15 , and rats took over.
since we got jack a border collie mix i havent seen anything. i am certain jack has driven off all the varmits from our yard........
Don Y wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 15:36:19 -0700:
Everyone says I'm going to get "rodents" (specifically "rats"), but, if I'm getting them, I don't see 'em. I see coyotes. I see rabbits. I see quail. Deer. Bobcat. Chipmunks. Lots of birds. But no rats.
We don't have to rinse the food containers either. But we do anyway.
Good point on the information leakage. I have a shredder. Now if you can help me get the wife and kids to *use* it, I'd be thankful.
In truth, I "recycle" my electronic waste at the "Goodwill" drop off.
Yeah, but what is in the waste bin in a bathroom? I find bottles of shampoo and tissues and q tips and hair nets and cardboard hair coloring, etc.
All of which is recyclable.
Ed Pawlowski wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 18:34:34 -0400:
Our recycling here seems pretty open. I am sure we could put stuff in there that they don't want but I've never known anyone to care what goes into the recycling containers.
Everyone says that. We have deer. We have squirrels. We have birds. We have bobcat. We have coyote. We have snakes. But, I don't think I've ever seen a rat. (We do have a family of gophers or moles which I want to go Bill Murray on, but that's a different story.)
Seems to me that they mush that stuff up in water, and then press it dry, and then use the fiber to make cardboard and paper.
I don't think the teeny tiny amount of earwax will make any difference when it's mixed up with a ton of other similar paper products.
Razor blades are a good point. I recycle them. Plastic for the most part, right?
I would think that they melt the plastic, and then they sieve or sink out the contaminants (such as the metal blades). AT least if I were running a recycling facility that's what I would do.
I'd use water on the paper and heat on the plastic.
trader_4 wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 15:43:32 -0700:
I guess that's a good point in that *some* plastic isn't recyclable.
But I pretty much recycle all plastics.
They don't seem to complain so they must have some way of filtering it out of the mix if it's plastic they don't like.
But, realistically, a recycling main facility must deal with tons of scrap at a time, so, I would think they deal with it on the gross level.
RonNNN wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 18:32:36 -0500:
Our trash costs 33 dollars a month, and is NOT subsidized by our taxes as far as I know.
They pick up once a week and we're allowed two 60 gallon blue bins, two 60 gallon green bins and one 25 gallon brown bin.
They say they make money on the recycling (blue) containers and on the landscape (green) containers but they lose money on the trash (brown) containers.
Mike Duffy wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 20:13:04 -0400:
That's a good point. Our trash bins are well made so the lid keeps animals out. Some people bungee cord them, but very few do.
There is only one hole which is where an aluminum bar goes through them around the middle (I think for the truck to latch onto), so they could hold water if it weren't for that middle bar.
There is an old joke that some people can afford to waste other people's resources! :)
We are on septic so sewage isn't a concern.
We are on a well, so the only cost for water is the electricity to pump it out.
RonNNN wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 19:32:00 -0500:
I'm curious what you pay.
We pay 33 dollars a month for the once-weekly trash pickup (which includes two bins of blue, two bins of green and one bin of brown).
We pay 13 cents to 50 cents a kilowatt hour to pump water (depends on the monthly amounts) and we don't pay sewage since we have septic.
Stormin Mormon wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 21:12:38 -0400:
Really. They burn waste motor oil? I would think that it's a carcinogen. WHo knows what is dissolved in the waste motor oil?
Lots' of petroleum by products I would think. Doesn't seem to me to be a good thing to burn, but, I guess if the heat is high enough, everything is incinerated.
Ed Pawlowski wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 19:15:52 -0400:
I'm in a rural area. Many acres. No house in sight. I agree that a city would be different.
philo wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 20:10:01 -0500:
I used to do the same thing. Couches, tables, chairs, they'd all disappear.
I do hate it when they rip out the antenna or the knobs off a TV or some such thing, which ruins it.
I can't comment on carcinogen. But, who can tell? Most of the crud goes up the flue pipe, I'd think.
HerHusband wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 23:20:04 +0000:
I'm curious how they would know what you put in there? We have three trucks that come by on the given day. The driver never gets out of the truck. He pulls up to the bin, the machine picks it up and puts it in the back of the truck.
How would they know what you put in the bin under those circumstances?
Out here you have to pay for plastic or paper bags at a grocery store. It's the law.
I should have mentioned I take a LOT of things to Goodwill, which, in effect, acts like a recycling center.
I'm on septic also. Poop. Pee. Toilet paper. And that's it. Just like you.
If she watches near zero television, and is cell phone free... then she had a chance.
You didn't ask my advice. But spend a lot of time with her. Express your love. And read to her often from good books.
- . Christopher A. Young learn more about Jesus .
We can compost cat litter here in Toronto, my wife and I do not buy the clay based stuff anyway, we use a wood pellet, I have seen it sold as cat letter, then saw essentially the same stuff sold for pellet stoves. It works just as well and is much cheaper.
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