Recycling: You Have to -Want- to Do It

Whenever a news story has the word "green" in the opening sentence these days, you know what's coming.

The story is about global warming... or pollution... or reducing both by recycling.

Recycling.

Over the last ten years or so, I have become an avid recycler. Not a tree-hugger, not an Al Gore groupie, but one who believes it only makes sense to reuse anything that is reusable.

In my garage are three large plastic trash cans, and my family uses them to store boxes, bottles and cardboard. When the trash cans are full, I drive to my nearest recycle center and empty them, along with the newspapers that have piled up.

Note... I -drive- to the recycling center. It probably takes about 30 minutes out of my day, twice per week, but I don't mind at all. It's become part of my regular routine. Sometimes when I have appointments in downtown Spartanburg, I'll even take the recycling bins along and empty them at the recycling center across from the Spartanburg County Administration Building.

Spartanburg County doesn't offer curbside recycling (Spartanburg City does). I'm sure participation would be much greater if families could simply take their recyclables to the curb for pickup.

It's interesting that my parents, who live five miles from the nearest town, -way- out in the country, have county-run curbside recycling.

Then again, they live in Orange County, North Carolina, in the same county with Chapel Hill, and environmental issues get more priority there.

I'm glad my folks have this option. Growing up, there was nothing to do with trash but burn it, nothing to do with cans and bottles but throw them in the woods. Probably lots of families still dispose of trash those ways. But now, we have alternatives, and we know the benefits of recycling.

It keeps expensive landfills from filling up as quickly.

Look at what else I found out from the National Recycling Coalition:

"Every ton of paper that is recycled saves 17 trees."

"It takes 95% less energy to recycle aluminum than it does to make it from raw materials. Making recycled steel saves 60%, recycled newspaper 40%, recycled plastics 70%, and recycled glass 40%. These savings far outweigh the energy created as by-products of incineration and landfilling."

Visit http://www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-benefits.html for other benefits of recycling.

Taking care of this earth is a high calling. The way I see it, God provided it, but He expects us to take care of it. We are the stewards of this place.

Finding new energy sources is out of my realm. I'm not a technically-minded person.

But recycling is easy and sensible. If you need advice on what can be recycled, and how and where to recycle it, just about all counties and cities now have a recycling expert (check the local government web site where you live).

This year, I'm also mulching the yard as much as I can.

Excess yard waste goes into my garden plot, which over the course of 15 years, I have transformed from hard clay to soft, rich, dark soil. And I did it strictly through composting. The ground just needed some nutrient TLC.

Come to think of it, my dad may have invented recycling. Only, that's not what he called it when I was a teenager on the family farm.

He described it this way: "Take this pitchfork, clean out that hog pen, throw the (you know what) on the manure spreader, and spread it in the pasture to make the grass grow better." Messy recycling. Smelly recycling. Endless recycling. But recycling, nonetheless. Oh, the memories...

Seriously, it warms my heart when I see cars backed up, like they were today, at my community's recycling center. It means more and more people care.

What are you throwing away, that you -could- be recycling?