Recycle Day

Boy, did we have fun today. It was recycling day.

Donna and I have been recycling for years and years. We've always checked out the recycling possibilities where we live and have done our best to recycle everything we could. We are fortunate that San Angelo has a wonderful recycling center called S.A.F.E. (San Angelo Friends of the Environment). We began using S.A.F.E. when we lived in nearby Ozona in the 1990s.

Today, much of the city has curbside service for recycling. In our last home here, we were able to use that service. However, our current home is not served by city trash collection; that service is provided by Rio Concho West, and they do not recycle. So, about once each month, we load up the car and haul a load of recyclable goods to S.A.F.E.

There is no telling how much of our trash has been kept out of landfills over the years as a result of our recycling efforts, but I think it is considerable. We no longer produce much garbage. Our crew picks up garbage on Mondays and Thursdays, and we usually have only a very small bag, and sometimes not even that because of our recycling efforts. Most of our waste goes to our recycling bins.

Right now, most of our recyclable waste is probably newspaper or cardboard. It's really amazing how much cardboard is used in packaging out there. Consider all the things you use in your house that contains cardboard in some way: toothpaste boxes, bath soap boxes, rolls from toilet paper and paper towels, cereal boxes, waffle boxes, cracker boxes, and the list goes on and on.

Below are some pictures from our recycling effort today.

We keep these 4 bins in our garage. From left to right, they contain tin cans, aluminum cans, #1 plastic, and #2 plastic. We use very little aluminum, but the plastic bins fill up usually. We also accumulate quite a bit of tin.

These are the recyclable items we keep inside. They are newspapers, cardboard, glass items and egg cartons in the same bin, and numerous plastic wraps or bags in white bag.

And here are all our recyclable goods for about one month. They fairly fill up the entire back end of our SUV, and the back seat is in down position. So each month, this is how much space we save in our landfill. Now, if everyone did this . . . 

No, these are not all of Donna's wine and beer bottles. Seriously, this is the glass bin at S.A.F.E. Quite a load, isn't it.

This is the part of S.A.F.E. where plastics, tin, and aluminum are collected. The tall blue machines under the cover compress plastic into bales.

These are the bins where newspapers, glass, and similar items are collected. The bin at front left is the glass bin shown two pictures above.

These are some of the old appliances and other items that will be taken away.

Oil and similar items are collected in the dome structures at left center in picture.

I think we are very fortunate to have a facility like S.A.F.E. here in San Angelo.