Recycling in Suburbia

As I've mentioned, we are trying to recycle everything we can. The recycling bins in our garage are full about once a week to every ten days.

We do have curbside recycling in our town, but in order to be more frugal (and help with fundraising at our school), we deliver our recycling weekly to the receptacle at our school.

We're trying to reduce our trash to one bag or less per week. Ideally, we would like to only have to set out the trash once every two weeks. In order to do that, we'll have to make other changes in our purchasing habits. I'll be sharing those changes as we attempt them, and report about our successes and failures.

Items that are recyclable in our area include:

• newspaper
• catalogs
• ad inserts
• magazines
• phone books
• brochures
• office paper
• manila folders
• junk mail
• carrier stock (cardboard soft drink & beer cartons)
• chipboard (cereal boxes, shoe and gift boxes, etc.)
• aluminum cans
• #1-#7 food and beverage containers (water bottles, yogurt tubs, and takeout containers)

In addition to these items, I can recycle glass at a special receptacle at the grocery store. We actually only empty that bin about once a month or so.

Recycling resources that may be helpful include:

http://earth911.com/

http://www.nrc-recycle.org

http://www.recyclespot.org/