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