Posted by panu
Thu, 03 Jan 2008 06:47:00 GMT
Local newspaper today reported of a guy called Ari Derfel from Berkeley, California, who has saved all his trash for one full year. He is telling about his experiences in his blog. He has a full set of pictures of the piles as well.
I like his message a lot. There's no such thing as 'away'. A bit similar thought than the Blue Man Group video some time ago, where the message was that there are no emergency exits on earth.
PS. Some of the pictures look like my garage when I haven't done the recycling for some time. I'm glad that I don't need to store those in the living room, though.
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Posted by admin
Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:15:00 GMT
I have the luxury of having a garage where I can store stuff. Car is not one of them - there's never enough room for it.
Garage is my temporary storage for all recyclable materials. I try to recycle all paper, cardboard, metal, glass, garden waste and wood. I also try to recycle any larger burnable material, e.g. styrofoam or other packaging e.g. after a larger purchase. (Shamefully, I don't recycle biowaste, yet.) Today it was the time to take the recyclables to recycling containers around in the neighborhood. We needed to drive with a full car twice.
Where I live, I can recycle paper, cardboard, metal and glass for free. If I would put the same as mixed waste in black plastic bags and let the garbage guys take them, it would cost me 2.27 € per bag. Two car fulls of junk is maybe some 15 bags. I just saved close to 34 €!
For garden waste, burnables and wood I can drive to the nearest recycling center. With sorted waste, that costs 5 € for a regular car (trailers or vans will be more expensive). For each load of about 8 bags, I'll save again some 13 euros. For non-sorted junk they'll charge 11 €. By the way, I find the recycling centers one of the best services by the local authorities. The centers are super clean and easy to use, and on top of that, the personnel is very friendly. They also rent big trailers for 5 € for transporting junk back to the recycling center.
The most tangible way of seeing the savings is of course when taking the bottles back to the supermarket. Today, I returned 98 bottles and 19 cans, and I got 20 € in return. I bought a very nice bottle of red wine (Italian Barolo) with that. That'll compensate nicely for the half an hour of extra trouble!
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