The recycling habit...it’s so easy!
As most of you know, I grew up in the Seattle area. American society, very generally speaking, tends to be more progressive on the coasts, and so I pretty much grew up recycling. It’s almost second nature to me, but it’s a relatively recent thing here, at least within the last 10 years or so.
Last year, the city of Seattle enacted a ban on single-use plastic carryout shopping bags, and it made sense to me. Myself and my family have been using canvas reusable bags for groceries for years, they are much sturdier and the handles don’t break as easily as plastic.
I remember being somewhat horrified the first few times I went shopping at Walmart and having the cashier use 17 plastic bags for my 14 items, which could have all fit nicely into two or three of my canvas bags, but when in Rome, do as Romans do, right?
Noooooo...I started looking for reusable bags quickly!
Inevitably, we wind up with plastic bags now and then, but we use them to line the bathroom garbage cans, so they’re not totally wasted.
In 2009, Seattle enacted a ban on styrofoam and in 2010, required all food service establishments to use only recyclable or compostable materials for packaging.
In early July, Seattle formally banned all plastic straws and utensils. Other cities, such as Miami Beach, Florida; Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, and several municipalities in California, including Oakland and Berkeley, have enacted bans on straws but not utensils. New York City introduced legislation to ban plastic straws in May.
According to CNN, A report last year from the academic journal Science Advances said that as of 2015, only 9 percent of plastic was being recycled, 12 percent was being incinerated and the other 79 percent was ending up in the environment.
Booooo...we can do better than that, can’t we? How cool would it be to make the Midwest the recycling capital of the country? It would be very cool, I think.
They say that any new habit you can stick to for two weeks becomes more than a habit. Try recycling for two weeks and see how easy it is. You create so much less garbage, it’s insane.
Try it for the little guy in the photo, he would appreciate it very much!
- -- Posted by hoosierma on Sat, Aug 18, 2018, at 6:34 AM
- -- Posted by pattidanner on Sun, Aug 19, 2018, at 12:33 PM
- -- Posted by Common sense... on Fri, Sep 14, 2018, at 10:52 AM
- -- Posted by pattidanner on Fri, Sep 14, 2018, at 6:24 PM
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