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.