When You're Saving One Can, You're Saving Two Cans!

Or "When you're saving one can, you're saving toucans!"

Every day on PBS Kids, I hear this being said. I don't know what it's a commercial for, or if it's just a public service announcement, but I like it.

I also both love and fear that the other day, the three year old (ALMOST FOUR!!!) looked in the trash can and I said, "Don't touch that! It's dirty!" And she looked at me and said, "I was just looking for cans, Mom."



So, this week, we got two gigantic and heavy bags of recycling from the Dodgers game we went to on Friday. (Free tickets thanks to saving receipts from the 76 gas station.)

Also, my brother kindly donated the many many bottles of Mountain Dew he drained.
Several friends gave some bottles and cans-- more Perrier, Dawn? And the day spa that said they didn't get many bottles gave me a huge bag full of plastic bottles that otherwise would have been thrown away. Yay! See? Every little bit adds up.

$9.20 added to kids' college fund.

TOTAL CAN COUNT: 3451

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway!

Okay, so here are a few of the things I've done in my life-- been on TV and won a game show, run the Honolulu Marathon after raising $3,000, JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE. You would think that going around the neighborhood asking local businesses to start recycling and possibly donate their cans and bottles to me would be relatively easy. And it was. But I have been putting this off and off and off. Yay, procrastination. I walked two blocks with Max this afternoon asking local businesses if they recycled and if anyone else picked up their recycling.

One local business, Suburban Martini (which I think is a great store, and Kelly, I love your stuff, and Daisy is too cute) was very into my project. She took a card and said she'd call when she got any sizable about of stuff together and suggested I ask the bar next door. She thought they had someone pick up the recycling, but what did it hurt to ask?

At the bar next door, Gem City Grill, I stopped at the front door. There was a sign that read "No one under 21 may enter." With Max in my arms, that sign almost stopped me from going in. I hemmed and hawed and went back and forth. It was like a force field pushing me back. No, scratch that. It wasn't the sign pushing me back. It was fear. But I thought myself out of it. "What's the worst that could happen? The other store was really nice. What are you afraid of?" I literally went up to the door, turned around back to the car and went back to the door twice. But, I went in and nodded at the man at the bar at 11:00 a.m., who smiled at Max. I continued past the girl shooting pool and found someone who worked there. Tracy (?) told me they already had an older couple who came to pick up the recycling every Wednesday, but she said she used to be an environmental consultant in the early 90s. Oh, that got my attention! And she told me how Waste Management paid people to talk about worm farming and recycling at schools. Also, she used to work for a company called Ecosynthesis. Oh, you can bet I'll check that one out! So, no cans, but I got a little knowledge.

And on and on I went. One block, then another and finally success! Daniel at Y Sharis Spa was a little dubious, I think, as to what I was doing, but I happened to have a brand new recycling bin I got from Bottles and Cans.com and he let me give it to them. He seems to not think they get many bottles and cans, but he will let me come once a week to pick them up. (We'll see how many pile up, little by little. Maybe it'll be a few, maybe not so much.)

Anyway, next I stopped at T Phillips Alehouse and Grill on Myrtle and talked to the bartender there, who was very friendly. She suggested that most of the local bars and restaurants set out their recycling around midnight or 1:00 a.m., and if I was interested I could pick them up then. Hmm... we'll see.

After that, it had been about two hours. My extrovert was tired and I don't know why, but each store seemed like another rock to climb. I was so proud of myself for feeling nervous and anxious and going in anyway. So, we'll see if I hear from Kelly at Suburban Martini, or Lori at Monrovia Florist. But if nothing else, I DID something!



Edited to add: Can total: 3267

And in Other Recycling News

Apparently, I am not the only one with the brilliant idea of using recycling to do fund raising. This couple paid for their wedding with their recycling. Although, they don't have the CRV (California Redemption Value) that we do in this state, so they had to work even harder!

Check out the Yahoo article and their own website!
Wedding Cans.com

And in other news, a man and his worthy crew sailed from San Francisco to Australia on a boat made of plastic bottles. Read more here!

Please, if you see more articles that are bottle and can related, send them to the can mom at fivemillioncanproject@yahoo.com!

Thanks!

FMC: Weekend Update: Monrovia Street Unfair

Okay, so whine, whine, whine, but the FOUR bins I put out at the street fair last Friday were not the huge success I expected. Number one, two of the bins I set out looked too much like plain trash cans and the signs I placed on them were merely bumper-sticker sized, not the giant 8x10 glossies that people need in their faces. The two bins that looked, yes, like recycle bins, got a fair amount of cans collected. I thank you who did look and see what was happening. I understand most people do not have the obsession with bottles and cans that I do. I am an oddball with a penchant for peeking in the can I pass at the store, the gas station, walking down the street. And usually, I find a can or bottle or two.

Most people at the street fair are just there for fun, and not there to concentrate on trash. I'm not asking that people become obsessed here, just that they look around and notice things.

My brother made a hefty donation of Mountain Dew bottles. (Dude, I think you need to lay off the caffeine.) And I made a sad realization that a local Southern California water park (that I am writing an article about) does not appear to recycle. I saw nary a recycling bin anywhere, although water bottles were EVERYWHERE-- even one floating in the kiddie pool for a minute. A quick ask to a teenager working in one of the retail shops, and it looks as if they don't recycle at all. Or maybe I was just asking the wrong person. But, I'm going to ask the right person and see if they would be willing to start a recycling program.

Here's hoping!

This week, we saved 215 cans and bottles, for a total of 3172.

Stray Puppies

Some people stop and pull to the side of the road to rescue stray puppies and kittens. Me? I stop for stray empty cans of Starbucks Double-Espresso energy drinks sitting on the side of the road. Or, at least that’s what I did today. (And yes, of course I would have stopped for a puppy or kitten. Ask my husband. I have done so before.)

I may have gone over the edge.

However, I have some interesting news. Okay, so maybe it’s not interesting to anyone else, and maybe you’ll read this and wonder, “Why am I wasting my time with this? And why is she?” But I am excited because this week, on Friday, I will have four recycle bins out at the Monrovia Family Festival. And these are approved bins, not like I threw out some renegade illegal recycling bins to steal all your cans. These are bins that have officially been allowed by the company that runs the festival. I don’t know why, besides the hopeful large masses of rescued bottles and cans, this makes me so happy. Except for one thing—I actually got off my butt and made a phone call. And it was easy. And all I had to say was, “I’m doing a recycling project. Can I put out some bins next Friday?” It’s not so hard to ask for help. It’s not so hard to get over that mountain of procrastination. It was just one phone call—or actually, a message left and a phone call received. But, all I have to do now is put out the bins and collect them on Friday. And that’s easy. And I’ll probably still be there fishing out cans from the trash bins. (I don’t know why people can’t walk the 10 feet to the recycling bin, but that’s just me complaining again.) But thank you in advance, Monrovia, for recycling and helping me save 5,000,000 cans.

Grand total: 2957

Busy Bee Apology

Okay, so two things. One, my last article was a bit preachy. But it gets me angry when people just refuse to recycle. Very irksome. Even more so when they have an easy way to do it. It’s so easy! Really! (But I must stop myself before I get going again.)

And two, I have been absent for too long. Since my last rant, um, I mean message, I have recycled another 102 cans and have bags and bags sitting outside my back door. Also, I got a chance to attend Lilith Fair in Irvine. I never had the opportunity to visit the first Lilith Fairs in the ‘90s, so I really wanted to go to this one. While there, I saw the Reverb table. Reverb is a company that helps “green” music tours and festivals. I first heard of them when reading about the Barenaked Ladies Cruises. They did enough carbon offsets and recycling that the cruise didn’t actually have as much of an impact on the ecosystem. (Not sure how that works, exactly, but every little bit helps, right?)


But Reverb was asking people to make a pledge, so I made mine.
I actually made two – one, with my friends to “Reduce, Recycle and Reuse”
and the second, to “Work Towards a Sustainable Future.” I figured I was already doing these, so I might as well pledge it officially somewhere.




Other things I was able to do this week, I threw a baby shower for my best friend and since times are tight, instead of doing lots of flowers for the baby shower, I asked my neighbor if I could have some of the lemons off her tree. She says she had too many to use anyway, so we filled some old vases with lemons and tied them with pink streamer. How’s that for reusing? And we decorated with some old pics of the mom and dad to be as babies. More reusing—thanks for the old pics, grandparents to be.

And my husband found something else of interest—our trash service, Athens Services, offers an extra 90 gallon recycling bin free of charge! So, we asked them to deliver another one so I can recycle the shredded paper from my husband’s office and hopefully, whenever I get a job, I can recycle anything from there too (if they don’t recycle already). I also offer to recycle for anyone else who doesn’t have access. If you have Athens Services, call 888-336-6100 and they’ll bring you a free recycling bin. All you have to do is fill it with recyclable material!

I hope anyone reading can find a way to go even greener and keep on keepin’ on, as they say. Every day we get closer to our goal.
Grand can total: 2722.

Thank you to my brother, who is remembering to recycle and helping out his niece and nephew at the same time. (And thanks for the babysitting too, bro.)

Recycling is a Pain in the Butt

But everyone should still do it. To not recycle in this day and age is plain lazy, especially in a metropolis area like Los Angeles. Now, I hate to be preachy (too late) but one of my friends “back home” had to drive out her every day trash to the dump herself. Luckily, most of us have trash pick-up. Many of us even have curbside recycling. I use both, although we try to make it a priority to make sure the recycling bin has more in it than the garbage bin. Now, you don’t have to make the extra step to return your recycling for cash. As my brother says, it hardly seems worth it. And in other states, you may not get anything.

That being said, not being wasteful is a duty for us all. A duty. Now, I don’t care if you have enough money to buy a million cans and toss ‘em with out a second thought. I don’t care if you don’t have enough money to have a recycling pick-up at your building. There is always a way to recycle, and it probably isn’t that difficult. Someone said to me the other day, “Well, we don’t get many cans and bottles.” One quick glance into their trash can, and I saw two Gatorade bottles. I don’t know what I would have found if I had peeked into their other cans, maybe nothing, maybe a half dozen water bottles. But I feel that it’s a shame for anyone to toss a can into a landfill. Yeah, what’s one bottle? What’s one can? Well, so far, one bottle or can at a time, I have now collected 2620 cans, worth $131.00. And I don’t go out of my way to spend all day looking for bottles. I don’t stop the car on the freeway to clean up cans on the side of the road. I accept my friends’ cans, some from my family, and pick up after 4th of July or concerts that I attend. One bottle at a time, I’ll pay for my kids’ college. And other people are throwing it away.

Please, teach your family and kids to not be wasteful. Teach ‘em to recycle.