Garbage/Recycling

The first thing to acknowledge is that there is no "Away".  Something being "thrown away" when no longer useful is a short-sighted, convenience-based concept.  All things produced ultimately end up somewhere as pollution unless there is a Grand Master Plan for its creation and ultimate return to original components.  When you purchase items, we encourage you to consider this and make purchases accordingly!  The "Cradle to Cradle" concept is a Permaculture value which facilitates this kind of responsible, forward thinking.

  

The yard debris rollcart lives at the end of the driveway.

Diseased wood, leaves and fruit go here, as well as branches.

Food scraps do not go here. They go into the compost, where hopefully the chickens have a crack at the goodies!

The garbage rollcart is small, green, and lives out the back door, at the back of the van.  Recycling rollcart is big and blue, and glass bin is small and blue.  They live back there too.  Glass goes in the small, square, blue bin, lids removed...

Everything must be clean.  There is a place here for little metal bits.  Everything from twist ties to bottle caps to jar lids & tin foil wrappers.  Ideally, foil won't have a lot of food particles.  If you have food containers to recycle, make sure the food is composted and the container clean.  Plastic (grocery and produce bags) must be clean and kept separate.  Proper recycling is ever-changing environment, deserves a conversation, and is an ongoing project which happens largely out the back door in this staging area.

 

This type of plastic is not recyclable

 Sadly, "clamshell" type plastic like this (also some to-go-containers) must be placed into the landfill.  This is the kind of plastic which literally takes hundreds of years to break down.  To put this into perspective, there are islands of plastic in the oceans as large as some states.  This all by itself is disturbing.  Also equally alarming is that every one of these items created still exists.  Unless it has been burned, in which case the toxins have simply changed form,  This is a good reason to rethink first (vote with our dollars), reuse second, and recycle third.