where do you live
uh in the Houston area
uh-huh well i used to i lived there for a long time but i'm now in Palo Alto California which is i think the recycling capital of the world
oh that's great
so we have many recycling activities and i'm in in full uh support of all of them
oh we are too our community is uh just starting to get
organized about it they just opened up a recycling center where we go and donate our our things and dump them off ourselves
um-hum
and uh
well that's something but it it seems to me that we've gotten a whole lot better um
cooperation out here uh by setting it up so that we pay just a little bit extra uh actually i don't think we pay very much extra at all too but the uh garbage men
uh-huh
come by uh on your regular garbage day and pick up the recycling out at the curb
i think that's great there's a few places in Houston where they're trying that out i don't know if it's
the if they've done it citywide yet or not where they have the color coded uh bags and uh
bins
yeah we have burlap sacks and they give us one for aluminum and
oh
uh steel one for metals
uh-huh
and one for glass and then you can either bundle your newspapers or put them in grocery bags
so we have we leave three little piles of things out on the curb every Thursday and the garbage men come by and
uh collect them and leave us new bags when ours get old and ratty or leave the ones if they're still in good shape
oh that's great
and the it really pays for itself because oh then the city gets the money from the recycling
uh-huh
yeah we're we're all for it our um we've got several bins in our on in our garage where we uh
you know sort things out and and take it to to the appropriate places
yeah the one thing i wish we could recycle is magazines but they claim that because of the way they're bound
they uh it's too expensive to recycle them at my office we have
yes
two big cardboard boxes in the library where everybody goes to pick up their mail and they're uh
one's for white paper and one's for colored paper so anything like manuscripts or computer paper or
um-hum
things like that goes in those boxes but we get tons of catalogs and things like that and magazines and there's no way to get rid of them it just seems like such a waste
oh it does it does but i'm sure that they can uh find some sort of uh use for them if you know
you know there i've seen talk about uh using garbage for uh energy
um-hum
and so you know you could also apply the magazines toward that
well that would be a help i wish they would do that here we have got
so little landfill space left that we're going to run out before the end of this decade and it's really going to be
yes
a mess when we have to start hunting for places to put the things
oh i know it
we did have uh another novel uh experiment start this year now we can put all our yard clippings out you can you buy these super giant heavy duty paper bags they're about four feet high
oh
uh-huh
and you get them for i think it's about fifty cents a piece at the grocery store um you usually buy them by the dozen
um-hum
and then you put all your lard yard clippings and uh leaf rakings and anything that will be compostible
oh uh-huh
and those and the garbage men also pick those up on Thursdays
oh that's great
and then the uh they take them to a special part of our dump where composting is
now in full swing and at the end of every year uh they sell all the composts to nurserymen and to local people who want to put it on their flowerbeds
right well that's a great idea i wish we were that uh involved in uh or that our city was so involved in that involved in recycling
yeah
like that because you know i've talked to many people and we wouldn't mind going its extra effort to do it
uh
if they make it so that it's not a horrendous inconvenience i think most people would
yeah oh yeah you know and i don't mind you know at first it was the the little extra money that you got you know returning the cans in and stuff like that but now you know i don't mind as long as things are getting recycled you know that we don't get reimbursed
right
no i think it's it's to me more of a convenience to have them come pick it up
uh-huh
than to get that two cents when you take it to the store we still have bins at the grocery stores where you can turn in bottles and cans
oh i oh i know it
um-hum
for cash but so few people uh have enough to make that worthwhile you'd spend more in gas getting down there than you get back
right yes and then the plus the time that you waste standing in line is valuable also
now do the grocery stores in Houston have recycling for their paper bags and plastic bags
we have i know of one that the one that we use uh
has uh recycling for the bags
uh-huh
and uh
and they're promoting the cloth bags you know the reuse reusable cloth bags
yeah well we can get a nickel a piece for any paper bags that we bring back to be reused
oh that's great
they just take it off like they do a coupon they just subtract it from your bill
oh
and they have a giant bin by the front door for the plastic bags and they say you know as long as it's clean they don't want a plastic bag that's full of goop
uh-huh
yes
here they don't want your rotted tomatoes but they want
any clean and dry plastic bag so i keep and the thing is i hardly have room now for all the things that we're saving it to recycle so right outside the back door i've got the two burlap bags hung up for the cans and bottles
uh-huh
and there right outside the
that place where the garbage can is we have the bag for the newspapers
and now we've got the bag for the plastic bags
i understand uh my husband about once a weekend he'll go uh to a couple of areas where he knows that the people just throw cans out
oh yeah
and he'll go pick them up because he just can't stand that he he
well how nice that's great
and uh it's so you know he we have all our piles of of recyclables also
um-hum
i remember at Christmas the the only thing that i'm when you were talking about the composting the only thing that our city did that was they did uh provided a place for us to take our Christmas trees
um-hum
uh to for them to mulch
yeah
for for city use
and
well that's they just put all our Christmas trees in the regular uh compost
uh-huh
pickup so they did say that you had to put it out within i think it was uh
three weeks after Christmas and
uh-huh
right
uh otherwise you would have to treat it like you would any other lawn refuse it would have to be cut into four foot lengths
so you know if we have branches or something they have to be cut in four foot lengths but otherwise uh they have to be in one of their paper bags
uh-huh
well that sounds like you all really have a a great system worked out there
and they even picked up our uh
styrofoam plastic packing materials
they brought uh the week after Christmas they left a plastic bag on everybody's front doorknob with a little note on it saying we're trying something new next week only
uh-huh
if you have any uh of those little uh styrofoam peanuts that
uh-huh
any of your Christmas presents were packed in put them in this bag and leave it out with your recycling and we'll uh take all of those back and try to recycle them
right well see that's one
but i that's not going to be a regular feature that was just a one time thing right after Christmas
well the but uh something need does need to be done about the styrofoam
well those things must take up a huge amount of space in landfills
that uh
oh yeah i mean they don't uh uh
they don't mash they don't compress at all and they stay forever
no
right and i've seen where some places have taken a plastic and uh
they're recycling them into other plastics
um-hum
and the styrofoam also into insulation and things like that and i think that would be great if they could get something organized
along those lines
yeah i do too the difficulty with that is that very few people have enough to make it worthwhile it they really have to rely on businesses that generate a lot of that stuff
right
uh because otherwise uh you know they're not going to go house to house collecting it and you're not going to bother if you have one bag full to drive all the way to some recycling center to turn in just your little plastic peanuts
um-hum
right
oh i was thinking about you know like the uh the styrofoam used at uh the fast-food restaurants
yeah
that if everybody uh and so yeah i know like our cafeteria here uses a lot of styrofoam
but uh
now we quit that about two years ago no three years ago when we got China mugs for everybody
um
so and the only difficulty with that is that we're in the middle of a five year drought and so i it's a real difficult choice whether we want styrofoam cups to fill up our landfills or
uh China cups to use up our water
but at the moment we're using the China cups
and everybody gets one at the beginning of the year and then uh you're supposed to keep it recycled every day
well that's good
that's uh
yeah
they should last a while
well let us hope that everybody's going to be paying more attention to this and that we will get uh better reuse of things because
i believe we are i i do believe everybody is starting to pay attention and take heed of what is happening
yep
and so it'll it'll be good in the long run well i enjoyed it
it sure will well good to talk to
