2009 recycling totals
Don’t be too disturbed by this picture. It’s almost a year’s worth of recycling in our garage, and it’s almost waste deep.
Today we sorted all the recycling in preparation for bringing it to Sam’s in Murfreesboro tomorrow. It comes to about 55 bags of waste that will not make its way to the Middle Point landfill here in Rutherford County. In total, we calculated we sent about 40 bags of trash to the local landfill this year.
We are a family of two. Imagine what your family could do next year to help double the life of your county’s landfill simply by recycling. Imagine what your elected officials could do to encourage more recycling.
Below are this year’s recycling totals. What’s amazing is how similar last year’s numbers are to this year’s.
- aluminum: 17 lbs
- steel: 20.4 lbs
- glass: 33 lbs
- plastic: 60.8 lbs
- cardboard: 152.4 lbs
2009 TOTAL RECYCLING: 283.6 lbs
2008 TOTAL RECYCLING: 285.9 lbs
I take you are not required by statute to recycle? Here in Seattle it is law and now its just part of our daily habits…no biggie…
I think once you start doing it and it becomes habit, its really a no-brainer…
And good for you…
Cheers,
Steve
Steve, unfortunately we do not, and good for Seattle! In my neighborhood, most families send about 10-15 bags of trash a week to the local landfill. I know because I see it every week. Our local landfill does not have a liner and is bordered by our source for drinking water: the Stones River. So, whatever these families send to the landfill could easily end up in the baby’s formula.
Hopefully our elected officials will see a benefit to being proactive about this serious issue. Trashing our county, polluting our water and poisoning our wildlife aren’t the kind of behaviors I’d like to see our laws rewarding.
I love that you & Vince do this, all the way down to weighing the recyclables. I wish they would do curbside pickup on glass, but I’m going to start driving my glass in this coming year.
Thanks, Morgan
We just got back this morning with two car loads. Measuring it all was really the only way we could see our real impact, but it was mostly to demonstrate that impact to others with something more than just saying we recycle. It kind of blows us away to see real numbers, too. What shocked me this time was how almost precise it was to our numbers from last year.
I think that the government should require people/families to recycle their paper, glass,..ect. Our landfills are filling up way to fast. Just from your picture above, imagine 1 million homes producing that much rubbish! Its amazing.