YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A TREEHUGGER TO RECYCLE

The REALIZATION

Do y’all ever get shocked when your eyes are opened to something and you can’t believe you didn’t know about it or do it previously in your life? Well, I definitely do…quite often actually…and it never ceases to amaze me how much there is to learn and how many ways I can continuously grow!

Recycling is one of those for me.  I always heard about recycling and you would see the signs at the zoo and other places and knew of the damage but I always thought about it as someone else’s arena and someone else’s stuff to handle. I just wasn’t connected to it if that makes sense?

Well, I guess my title of the article says it all..yup..you really DON’T have to be a “treehugger” to recycle! And, it’s definitely not “someone else’s stuff to handle”. (On a sidebar in case y’all haven’t figured it out yet, I am fluent in sarcasm so this is by no means a jab at my fellow earth lovers who do a fabulous job and we need every single one of them.  This is, in fact,  more of a jab at people like myself who always thought it was a job for other people and of what small thinking that is…so don’t throw tomatoes just yet)

It’s time to make some positive changes and take responsibility for what we use and where it ends up! We used to put our trash out every single night and have a couple of bags each night. But, now since we started recycling, we only take our trash out a couple of times a week.

My “a-ha” moment came as we pulled up into the recycling center and saw all that trash that people brought to recycle. It made me think of when someone lets their dog poop in our yard and they walk off and leave it there. What are they doing? They are leaving their trash for me to pick up and it affects that my kids can’t play in the yard in that area and it makes me take time to do their job.

How is recycling, or NOT RECYCLING any different? We are basically doing that to the earth by not recycling…just dropping our trash on someone else’s lawn and not caring what effect it has on them.

It’s not too late to do something about it. While we can’t do anything about the landfills and how much is already there, we CAN change how much goes there in the future and have a different perspective moving forward by doing this one simple thing.

THE REASONING

You only have to like eating, drinking, being outside, and oh yeah..breathing in order to recycle!

The damage being done to not only our earth (which is where we grow our food, get our water from, walk and play, and breathe the air) but the absolute carelessness of it all is what shocked and convicted me!

The first time we took our recycling into our drive up recycling center, I was actually shocked at just how much trash there was there and then I realized that is just a tiny drop in the bucket of what is getting taken to the landfills and sitting to rot for years and decades and even longer.

We have a problem with contaminated water, air, and food. Although a portion of that can be linked back to hazardous chemicals that are purposely being put onto the “food” we eat, another portion is totally in our own control!

Think about that for a second!

You and I have the power to make an impact on the cleanliness of the dirt we and our families play on, the soil our food is grown in, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the very air we breathe.

Anytime we can do something so SIMPLE, and it can have such a MASSIVE POWERFUL LONG TERM POSITIVE EFFECT, why would we not do it?

THE RESPONSIBILITY

I think in our culture, it’s something we are accustomed to not think about, but we need to change that! The damage being done to our waterways, soil, and the air is out of control!

Let’s take a portion of that control back and do our part to hopefully impact future generations for better! When you think about it, how can we not want to do our part to help turn this problem around!

And, its like a great trickle effect, because once you start doing it, then, just like I am doing now, you tell others about it, and they start doing it and then their families and yours will carry on the newly implemented simple solution for their lives and pass onto their children as well!

This is NOT someone else’s responsibility to take care of my family’s trash.

This is NOT the landfill’s job to let our family’s trash pile up to rot away for generations, and spill into the waterways and contaminate our soil and air.

This is NOT the treehuggers (and I love y’all… this is sarcasm) job to do all the “save the earth” jobs while our family sits idly by trashing the planet.

It is our responsibility to take care of our own home wherever we live, right? Well, part of that is also whatever comes in your home and goes out of it, no matter how that looks. I won’t trash the earth any longer and invite you to do the same! We now get to make weekly runs to the recycling center because we have so much to recycle!

Why?

Well, because when we make that Costco run, and come home with big boxes, plastic bags from our organic apples, plastic bags that our organic zucchini and squash are in, the plastic and cardboard wrapping that holds are natural deodorant, and the list goes on and on and on.

No need to toss that cardboard pizza box in the trash…put it in the cardboard/paper recycling bin. It is truly incredible how much recycling you will collect and for our family it has been truly convicting and eye-opening.

It is crazy what you will start to notice as you use things and then your recycling game is game on as you start to notice the little things.

I want my children to have fresh healthy dirt and grass to play in.
I want my family to have healthy water to drink and food to eat.
I want to know I am doing our best to have healthy fresh air to breathe.

How to Get Started

So, this is probably the best part, because it takes literally $0 to get started!

Here are a few options of how you can set up your recycling HQ!

1.  A triple sorter “trash can” looking bin…one area for plastics, paper, glass. These are sold at lots of big box stores.

2. A  few cardboard boxes (from Costco or Amazon or wherever) tossed in the garage for different types of recyclables. This is what we used for over a year and a half.

3.  Recycling Bins.  So, we LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE (catch my drift) these new bins we just bought from IKEA (we are NOT an affiliate with them we just love them). They are stackable, come in different sizes, and have flip-up lids that make “the drop” easy and accessible. Of course, you know I had to cutesy them up with some designs I made on my Cameo! There are plenty of different recycling bins you can purchase anywhere…these are the ones that made the cut for us!

Now, here is the key…DON’T GET DISCOURAGED!

I say this because, in the beginning, it’s the changing of the habits that’s hard. You are going from mindlessly tossing “trash” in the trash bin and then a few minutes later realizing “oh crap, we aren’t doing that anymore” to purposefully with intent recycling things that aren’t meant to go sit in the landfill for generations!

You can constantly change your game. We always had smaller boxes for metal and glass as we noticed that is what we seemed to collect less of in the long run.
I am about to go buy more of those IKEA bins to sort out our donations and clothing recycling as well!
It is a process and you have to be willing to just jump in where you are and know it will evolve over time!

Here is a little peek at our simple basic recycling HQ that is about to grow with the addition of more bins for our clothing recycling as well!

10 Reasons To Start Recycling

 1.   It doesn’t cost you any time, money, or energy to implement this simple solution.
 2.  You can drop trash in your trashcan, then you can drop recycling in the recycle bin or box.
 3.  It is getting back to basics by appreciating and thinking deeply about our place in the world and how that affects not only future generations but our actual planet.
 4.  Some places will even pay you to recycle.
 5.  You can even recycle trashed towels, ripped shoes, etc.
 6.  You can waaaaay cut down on the trash that you put to the curb.
 7.  It doesn’t make sense to expect others to do something we are perfectly capable of doing.
 8.  You like to breathe clean air.
 9.  You like to eat food grown in clean soil and drink clean water.
10.  It matters to you what you will leave behind for future generations when you are gone.

The best places to recycle

(#2 was new to me!)

1. SALVATION ARMY for donated goods including clothing, household items, etc. and they even do pick up! This is the only company we recommend for donations simply because they really do the most good with the majority of each dollar they earn going back towards their mission. Here is the link to find a local one near you.

2. H&M for torn and tattered and stained items that would normally be deemed trash. This even includes old towels, torn and stained shirts, ripped apart barely recognizable shoes and more. They recycle these and break them down to use for insulation and more! Click this link to read more about their initiative! They also accept good condition clothing as well. They have collected over 20,000 tons of textiles just in 2018 alone! 

3. Local recycling Center for household “trash” that can be recycled now with your newfound mindset! OK, so I was about to put y’all a link here to click on, but honestly, there are SOOOOOO many out there, so here are the words you can put into the search engine to get some results and see the plethora of places near you where you can begin your recycling journey. “Where Can I Recycle” or “Recycling Centers Near Me” are good search terms that will bring up many from paying you to recycle to big drop-offs and curbside pickups!

4.  Homeless Centers, Local Churches, and Other Local Organizations for any goods that you would also send to the Salvation Army as well as anything else they may list on their sites as needs.  Consider looking these up in your area as well for a good donation/recycling resource.

Congrats on the beginning of your journey and partnering with us and so many others that no longer want to sit idly by and trash where we live!

Comment below if you have always been a recycler, or are new to the game like we are, or haven’t really ever contemplated it for yourself (just like we haven’t a couple of years ago before we started).