Recycling is easy when the right facilities are provided for you. But what if they are not? What do you do? Do you simply give in to your conditioning and use the regular trash bins? How do you feel after you have thrown away that plastic salad container, aluminium can or plastic bottle and/or the cardboard packaging? If you feel guilty and feel that you were left with no choice, I have the answer – try take-away recycling!
Sometime ago, while eating lunch in a Parisian café, I was alarmed by all the vast amounts of recyclable debris that is discarded. This scene made me more determined than ever to really embrace my 'take-away recycling' practice. Since then, I have always ensured that I have a fold-up canvas bag in my backpack.
This canvas sack is my eco-doggy bag. Wherever I go, if recycling facilities are not available, I simply take containers and packaging with me and put it in the proper receptacles later.
The Responsibility Is Ours
Mandatory recycling laws only do so much if they even exist where you live. The chances are that more often than not, you are throwing away recyclables during your average day and (hopefully) feeling guilty about it. Take-away recycling has become my way of solving this problem.
In my office and others in the US and EU, paper and cardboard recycling is compulsory, but plastics and other recyclable products frequently end up in the trash. Restaurants and bars do little or nothing to provide recycling facilities for customers, even though most of what is used to package salads, drinks and meals is non-biodegradable and recyclable. So until recycling is the law everywhere, for anything that can be reused, I’ll take my recycling to go.
Make Recycling the Norm, not the Exception
The idea to write about this occurred to me the other day when a colleague asked me why I always take my “garbage” home. I explained that when recycling facilities are not immediately available – at lunchtime, for example– I prefer to recycle this “garbage” later by using the alternative bins at my home.
I walked away and wondered if what I had said had made any impact. Others in my office and in my life have seen me carry out this practice on a number of occasions, but I have seen little or nothing to convince me I’ve made an impression.
The reward, for now, is that I am improving my efforts to help the environment by finding new and creative ways to live ‘green’. I have not given up hope that my examples will go noticed. Hopefully, as the green revolution continues to gain momentum, the thankless acts so many of us carry out on a daily basis will become the norm, rather than the exception.
As we know, every little bit counts. Sure, in the big picture, even if I achieve a zero carbon footprint, it won’t have a very noticeable impact. But as Abbey Hoffman once said, “change doesn’t come about through conformists.” By taking my “trash” home or to proper recycling facilities, I have turned the tide. I have challenged the notion that throwing away recyclables is ok.
So by carrying an extra bag in my backpack I am able to take home everything I use during a workday or a day out that can be recycled. Whether it’s a take-away lunch, a sit-down meal or a picnic in the park, nothing gets wrongfully put in the trash on my watch!
© bflo12, 2009
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