after a year and a half of nagging from Elise to contribute to "our blog" I have decided to write a little tidbit. As a preamble, I need to tell anyone who reads this that anytime I use a journal/diary/blog, it is usually to rant. I will ask forgiveness first for what is about to come, and hope to keep this rant as short/nice as possible.
Hmm, how to bring this up and make it so people keep reading? How does one keep another persons' eyes from rolling?
I know! A PARABLE!
(commence eye roll)
Once upon a time there was this nice family of 3 who did everything in their power to choose the right. They would go out of their way to donate their time in the community. They would give of their substance by paying tithing to the church they went to. They would try their hardest to follow every law of man. They wanted to raise their child, and future children, with morals and a strong sense of what is right.
Over time this family realized that doing what is right, even though some times harder, is very rewarding and ....
AWWW Screw it.. I can't make this nice. sorry.
WHY DOESN'T ANYONE RECYCLE!!???
PA makes it sooooo easy. You get a tub, put garbage that is not really garbage in THAT tub. You take it out the same day as garbage, and SHAZAM! you just recycled. Are people AGAINST recycling? Are you against NOT throwing away aluminum ? a non renewable metal that was dug from the earth. Are you against not throwing plastic bottles ? which need 1.5 million barrels of oil a year to create. I know that in Utah it's like impossible to recycle... but now that it's easy, does being from Utah give you a pass so that you still don't have to do it? Does everyone know that it is a LAW in PA?
"Recycling is mandatory for every resident, business, office and institution in the City of Pittsburgh (City Code 619). "
I understand lazy. I am lazy. I epitomize laziness. But seriously! you are already going to take this stuff to the curb on Tuesday anyways! Just do it. If Dave Pringle can do it...
Any questions on how or what to put in the recycle bin click HERE
calming
calming
calm
OK then. such a nice parable.
comments welcome, just know that if anyone says anything about not recycling because the earth will be cleansed with fire, prepared to be scoffed and laughed at.
your truly,
Dave
EWWWW Gross!! This is what happens to the plastic bottles you don't recycle. Its called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and its formed by ocean currents that cause marine trash to accumulate in an area twice the size of Texas!!
12 comments:
Dave, Mike and I can SO RELATE to this rant! When we lived in grad student housing in NY, where recycling was as difficult as remembering to haul your bin out on Wednesdays when ALL the other bins were out, some people didn't do it. Needless to say, they were all from Utah.
hmmm, I know there are locations in Utah that have excellent recycling programs, where residents are issued the big blue garbage cans to put in all recyclables and leave on the curbside to be dumped- that is at least true in the area my sister lived in Salt Lake. (so that's the only area I am going to disagree with you on the rant. And no, I am not from Utah) And I remember when we lived in Pittsburgh, I wished that it's recycling program was as simple and convenient as in Utah (at least where my sister lived, I don't remember any recycling programs in provo), I remember reading in Pittsburgh over the recycling guidelines (which were much more complex than the new guidelines issued this year, I noticed) and being confused on what goes in what bag, what stuff couldn't leave curbside but had to take to recycling centers- it all had to be sorted seperately- which, I agree with you, isn't much work to recycle and the only excuse is laziness.
but now, I just read the new pittsburgh guidelines and you don't have to sort anymore and it all can be dropped curbside, it has made it even more convenient to recycle- when it is that easy to recycle, there really isn't an excuse- so props to the city of Pittsburgh and props to you, Dave, for being civic minded and for bringing it to more peoples attention.
Agreed! Provo's recycling system was practically non-existent (or hard to come by, I don't know which) and here, it's about as easy as it gets. We're lucky, some places like my parent's city in CA don't even offer recycling as an option.
Recycling is one of the most thoughtful things we can do for now & future generations. Facts: Every day the USA produces enough trash to equal the wt of the Empire State Bldg and Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic beverage bottles every HOUR.
Dave, you really should contribute to the blog more often. I enjoyed the post. In the people's republic of Cambridge they are serious about recycling. I think that our building has been fined multiple times-not because we did not recycle, but because some people did not do it correctly (really, how hard is it to break a box down or separate the paper from the other stuff?).
Before you can recycle in our little borough, you do have to go to the city office and put a deposit down (six bucks)...but if you happen to still know where the little handwritten receipt they give you is when you leave Pittsburgh, then you get it back :) So maybe that holds people back?
We finally got around to getting a second bin because the first was overflowing every week! I am amazed at how many things you can recycle and it does make me feel better. And we also have a pile of nasty leftovers behind our house in our flower bed that Tom refers to as our compost pile...I think everyone should start one of those too...it has decreased our trash by a lot and that means less is going to the landfill :)
I do think they make recycling very easy...the only complaint I have is that sometimes they reject certain things we put out and other weeks they take those same items...why???
I so completely agree! My first semester at BYU I kept ALL of my used plastic bottles and flew them home with me at Christmas so I could recycle them through Portland's well-oiled recycling machine. It was/is so painful to watch people not recycle!
So my questions, are these "tubs" a luxury of Brookline? Because we just put out our recycling in our blue plastic bags from the grocery store. I mean this works just fine, but I wouldn't mind having a tube too!
And Meredith - totally agree on the compost pile! We started one in the early fall and between that and our recycling we generally only send two or three grocery bags to the dump each week. (We always have WAY more recycling bags.) I'm really excited to use the compost on our garden next spring. It's supposed to be one of the best ways to keep your soil nutrient-rich.
I can't believe you drive an SUV! I guess that cancels out your recycling. Ü
Jeff- I don't understand how our "SUV" which has a 4-cylinder engine and gets about 29 miles per gallon, puts plastic bottles in the ocean.
Brooke- I'm happy to know that in some areas, Utah's recycling has improved. It didn't really exist in Provo when I went to school. Elise would keep all our aluminum cans and take them up to BYU to recycle.
Meredith- We've used the blue plastic bag method with out a glitch so far. But a tub might be nice...
..No wait
Dave said:
Maybe I should have started my blogging debut with something less denouncing and snooty. Sorry Utah people for taking the brunt of my verbal hammer. I have been known to throw away my fair share of soda cans and plastic bottles. For the most part, at least at home, Pittsburgh makes it easy enough to not have to make too much effort. I'm not saying to become a nut about it, just get the main bulk of it out.
Alright, time to go to church a full hour late. I'll try to make my next blog less condemning.
I used to be an avid recycle person...coming from Canada where you have a compost in every back yard and a great recycling programs...in AZ they give you this huge blue bin and we filled it every week with all the many things they accepted. Then we moved here to PA and they would take barely anything...and they dumped the rejects on my lawn. So I am not the avid recycle person I used to be. Sorry.
What I don't get is why the root word of "conservative," which is "conserve" seems to be the last thing on the mind of political conservatives. I mean, if you really want to live up to the English definition of your ideology, why not help conserve our resources by recycling? Its not hard and it is good for our earth and our communities. Here in Germany, everyone does it because the Germans don't have much land to spare and don't want to fill their land with garbage.
"This earth is [Christ's] creation. When we make it ugly, we offend him." --President Gordon B. Hinckley
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