Recycling

Mom was ready to go to home, back to MI, Monday afternoon. After spending the morning chilling out and buttoning up her last day in CA, I took her to the airport and saw her off. Thankfully she didn't have TSA up her ass during the security portion. I'd heard about it otherwise as if it was under my control.

After returning home, I carried out my plans to bring recycling to the recycling center, clean out the fridge, feed the worms, literally clean the fridge (the bag of Tony's rice/apples/bananas? leaked), grocery shop and prepare to make something good to eat for the first time in a couple weeks (and then my sink plumbing sprung a helly leak so I wound up making a sandwich).

I brought all of my recycling to Orange Coast College Recycling Center.  I really like that recycling center because it reminds me of those back home in MI as they take DAMN NEAR EVERY FREAKIN' THING you'd generate in a regular household. I'd go into that, but you can just click the link above.

More than that, OCC recycling is open 7 days a week, Sundays being donations only. I usually go Sundays to unload my recycling quickly without having to wait for the people who are interested in collecting their cash.  I have nothing against those people, but I don't have the patience to wait. As there are only 6 spaces for autos to park, it can be a freaking mess with traffic in that tiny lot, particularly if a couple people have month-loads of stuff to collect on.

So what did I bring to recycle?

• Cardboard from pizza and other cardboard boxes like those that I bring Costco goods home in (otherwise they'd roll around in the bed of the truck) as well as excess TP and PT cardboard tubes (1 large cardboard box full because I was too lazy and really didn't have time to chop 'em up)
• paper including junk mail, magazines and other glossies I don't feed worms (two 10-gallon containers!); milk cartons; packing material from doing all of my shopping online (hence the uniform of black T-shirt, blue Levi's and black socks -- for example, black is default for T-shirts and typing "10" for quantity is less time-consuming than selecting specific colors) 
• plastic, can, and glass food containers, including the shitload I take with me when I empty the recycling bins at work, the plastic my Costco TP and PT comes in, plastic grocery bags (fourteen 13-gallon bags total of plastics, cans and glass!)
• metal food containers generated from myself and Spook (1 plastic grocery bag)
• batteries from work and home (2 smallish boxes)

Turns out, if I don't visit the recycling center in 2-3 months, the recycling becomes the equivalent of a near-heaping truck bed-load of stuff that would otherwise go into the dumpster. Now my garage, apartment and truck are completely free of recycling materials. Ahh! *sigh of relief* That crap has been driving me insane.

Recycling is the big reason why I started keeping worms in the first place. Keeping worms has made me much more aware of the materials coming into my apartment and the materials going out. I am shocked by the quantity of waste a single person generates.

I try to do what I can to minimize what goes into a landfill first-hand by feeding worms phone books, paper bags, non-glossy paper/mail, egg cartons and the occasional TP tubes, as well as the garbage from my fridge, but I recognize it's possible for me to make better choices regarding what I purchase. I'd made that realization once a couple years ago, went on autopilot, and am now conscious of it again since I started up this blog.

Thanks for being interested in poop, it'll help me keep my little corner of the world even nicer.