On Tue, 29 May 2001, K.Feete wrote:
> I remember getting pretty upset when I visited my ex-boyfriend's
> parents and found out they didn't recycle. He had, and I did, but they
> didn't- even though the city they lived in had curbside pickup. He
> explained, when I asked about it, that his parents didn't want to pay
> the extra 10 dollars a month to get the curb pickup. This family,
> incidentally, had more nice stuff in their house than I'd ever seen in
> my life, three regularly used cars (one for each family member), and
> cable TV. Ten dollars was nothing... but they still wouldn't pay it...
> grrrr. I remember driving through that neighborhood on trash day and
> seeing, oh, six or seven bags of garbage out for every single house.
I insisted on paying the extra $2/mo. to recycle when we were in a
situation where we'd have to pay the extra, and we *didn't* exactly have a
lot of cash at the time. We could have put out all the trash in the world
and it would have been picked up.
Now we're getting our garbage collected by the city of Austin, and the way
Austin does the garbage, you pay a garbage rate based on the size of your
garbage barrel (30 gallons, 60 gallons or 90 gallons) and get to recycle
all you want for free. You also get to put out all the grass clippings
and yard trimmings you want for free, as long as it's in an appropriate
container. (We don't buy the special paper bags for the purpose; we
invested in a garbage can just for the purpose, so we're not putting extra
paper into the cycle. Plus, in the long run, it's cheaper.) If your
garbage bin isn't big enough to hold the garbage one week, you can buy
stickers to put on any garbage bags that won't fit in the bin, and those
are $2 each (plus tax).
We're a lot better about recycling now, because the system is set up to
cost us less to recycle, more to just toss. We do have lapses (I could
have recycled the plastic tray my frozen lasagna baked in, and should
have, but was too tired to deal with it properly on Monday), but we try to
minimize those, especially at times when it would cost us.
Julia
