By Steve Davies, Healthy Planet Columnist
That’s a really good question. So why recycle? Well, it’s safe to say when I was just a kid, it was part of my family, something we even did as a family occasionally. As I’ve talked about before, I can still remember those early visits to our local recycling center. I can remember how there were just a few bins but, boy were they big. Now when I say big, I mean they were spaces walled in by what are called railroad ties. Despite that though, they usually were not very full.
From what I can remember, there was one for aluminum and one each for the different color glass. I think they were clear, green and maybe brown. The clear and green ones were probably from your local grocery store while the brown ones were more likely from the local liquor store as they were usually beer bottles. The only other bin I can think of would have been one for newspapers but that was it.
I think it’s safe to say, the fun part for kids was probably throwing the glass in, hoping maybe you would break something. Looking back now however, that probably meant it wouldn’t be recycled, it would just be tossed.
Fast forward to today and now instead of going to your local recycling center, we have curbside pick-up. One less thing to do as a family. As far as the broken glass goes, there’s probably not nearly as much of that but, adding in plastics 1 – 7 and all sorts of paper and it can be quite confusing. As someone who puts in the time to recycle as much as I can through both watching what I buy and taking the time to make sure I recycle all that I can, it’s hard.
That said, perhaps we should look no further than Valentine’s day. I mean we do what we do for those we love. For those of us who have kids, we need to think about the next generation and what we’re leaving them. Some of us may do it for our friends and even our pets.
While we look to the stars above sometimes, we only have one planet, a place that I hope we all love. One thing I would add here is that my 25-year-old son, who happens to be autistic, has for a while now gotten into the habit of picking up trash and recyclables whenever we’re out and about running errands. To me, if he can get in this habit, why can’t we all? So, for me, that’s why I recycle.
For comments or recycling questions please email me at thprecycler@yahoo.com