If you ever happen to come into my kitchen, you may be struck with the sometime, okay usually, ugly box that is sitting next to the garbage can. It is usually cardboard and holds a wide variety of materials that may resemble garbage.
In fact, many visitors to our home ignore the black garbage can that is sitting next to the box and instead throw their garbage into the box. This can get a little annoying, especially if the box winds up getting an array of food leftovers. Because of this, the box has had to be replaced several times with other food-free cardboard boxes along the way.
I can’t see buying a recycling bin or bucket made out of plastic (using up resources), when we can simply repurpose cardboard boxes until they wear out or get ruined (and then we recycle the boxes themselves of course).
Of course, the box doesn’t usually contain garbage. Instead, it is a receptacle for all of our recycling. We do a lot of recycling, and you may usually find it full of everything mixed together. Our service is one of the more unique recycling services in that it brings the recycling to a plant that processes it all without the need for separating the recycling our by type.
I mentioned this box is usually full. This is because emptying the box into the larger rented recycling can is the job of the eight-year-old boy in the family. And like many eight-year-old boys, he is more interested in pilfering interesting materials from the recycling box for building projects than he is in actually emptying the box as a chore. At least we can be proud that he is repurposing things, right?
We are proud that our recycling box needs to be emptied much more often than the garbage. Still, one of our goals is to reduce the recycling as well. And then the big ugly cardboard recycling box can be replaced with a much smaller cardboard recycling box.
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
Related Articles: