The Surprising Thing I Learned Yesterday

You would think in this day and age that it would be very hard to learn anything that you could really call 'surprising.' Yesterday, however, my 12 year old son came home with the stunning revelation that my neighbors don't do ANY recycling. Nothing! This confession was made to him sometime during the day by their 11 year old son. I suppose he could have told me something more shocking, but this came as a pretty big surprise. To give my son credit, he revealed this information to me in a way that let me know he thought the whole thing was pretty scandalous.

We have a trash service that provides us with recycling bins and picks them up at the end of our driveways. All of our neighbors use the same service and recycling pickup is part of the basic service, not an 'add-on.' Bringing the bins to the street is a little bit of a hassle, but we don't have to drive to a recycling center.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a little bit of a recycling fanatic. I am not above picking things out of the trash (although only our trash) and would rather drive an empty soda can home to be properly recycled than to drop it in a trash can and not know where it will end up.

During the course of the day, there are plenty of items to recycle. Even if your family does not drink soda or bottled water, what about the laundry soap container or the shampoo bottles? Not all families subscribe to the newspaper, but what about the inevitable junk mail?

This is not a political post by any stretch. This is a post about resources...have you not read about the landfills? The trash barges that have been sent out to sea?

Believe me, I get that not everyone sees recycling as the priority that I do. But at some point, don't we all have a civic responsibility (not to mention a legal one in many communities) to recycle?