Recycling failure

I don't know how I've lived here all these years without coming up with a solution, but for the past 2 years I've had a growing pile of items that need to be RECYCLED. Maybe a lot of it is baby-related...lots of glass packaging and some cardboard.

I just couldn't figure out how to dispose of it properly, and that made me want to HOARD it even more. If it pricks my conscience to put it all in a landfill-bound heap, then I can just find a way to REUSE it. My suitcase is a lot lighter now that I'm not bringing craft supplies from the U.S.! And we have Pinterest now! Look how many ideas there are!

But enough is enough, and in the hopes of certain home improvement and decluttering projects becoming possible, I decided to find a way to finally get rid of some of these piles. But it turned out to not be so simple. I kept catching hints of recycling programs, only to learn that they were a bust; a temporary grant that people hadn't responded to actively, and therefore discontinued. It seemed to be one of those questions that goes unanswered in the forums, along with where to buy molasses and in what year the city will become handicapped-accessible...

A few times I stumbled upon a list of addresses published by environmental agencies. But as I ran those addresses through to double-check, most were defunct.

The glass seemed to be the hardest. We weren't even looking to redeem them for money. We just wanted to find a place that would take these dozens and dozens of glass jars and USE them for something. But I didn't find any reliable information.

So I gave up. Andrei took six bags of glass jars out to the dumpster yesterday. My only hope was that with them being all together, anyone looking for that kind of thing would find them before they got hauled away with the rest of the trash.

Apparently there ARE receptacles for paper. I have a HUGE garbage bag full of paper/cardboard remnants. I can think of so many ways I could use them: for Christmas cards/ornaments, decorations, Sunday school crafts, toilet paper towers, etc. But I just can't deal with the clutter. I'm not doing enough art to make up for it taking up so much space.

My comfort here is that we will build up another supply pretty fast. :)

Farewell, potential craft projects!

The paper garbage is going to be disposed of in the next few days and then I guess I will have to decide on a policy for future sorting.

I wish I could say I expect improvement in this city in the future, but I guess people just don't really have an incentive right now to sort their trash. I don't really like the idea of fining or otherwise punishing people for NOT doing it, but I do wish there were more options. We'll see.