Saturday, February 27, 2016

Not THAT Easy Being Green

Remember how excited I was about the expanding recycling opportunities around here?

From Target in Missoula where I could take the glass.

From the locally owned grocery where we could take numbers 1 and 2 plastics. Perhaps it's blurry because I was shaking with sorrow or maybe because of the downpour. 

Yeah.

When I was at grocery a young man from the volunteer organization that runs the recycling program was there collecting, so I was able to ask, "Whyyyyyyyyyy?" It turns out that they have to send their plastics to southern California and with oil costs so low right now, it's cheaper to make new plastic. The non-profit, volunteer-run organization is currently having to pay to recycle the plastics. They can't do that and maintain other services. When I told him about the glass recycling at Target being discontinued, the said they were surprised it lasted this long. With the local glass recycling, even one wrong item in the whole giant dumpster and the whole batch is considered contaminated. Of course, we can't trust the citizenry to not put cardboard or paper or caps or freakin' dirty - or even clean -diapers in the glass recycling which is a whole 67 feet from a more-conveniently located garbage can and likely about 15 feet from their vehicle if they drove or rode one.

The good news is that I was told that they are working diligently to get the plastic recycling back, but my hopes are not high for the glass. I hope I'm horribly, wonderfully wrong.



1 comment:

  1. Aw, I'm sorry. I was shocked, when I moved over here, to discover that commercial kitchens didn't get fined for throwing #10 cans in the dumpster- and that was just the beginning! Boise's now got you-don't-have-to-sort-'em recycling bins for residential customer use, but glass isn't included. It's getting better, on this side of the mountains, but it sure seems to be slow in arriving!

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