West coast girl meets east coast recycling by allegra
While waiting for my Harry Potter to be delivered, I thought I would blog about old news, since I’m abstaining from new news until I’ve made it through 652 pages. [Update: The Amazon record I looked at was incorrect. I actually consumed 759 pages.]
This week I finally found a reason for my cavalier attitude toward recycling: Food-trash recycling at homes to be required by Seattle in ‘09.
I can’t remember a time when garbage wasn’t put into at least two bins. I ate in the Microsoft cafeteria and divided up my waste at a station with four garbage options. I spent my formative years in a place where it seemed recycling had been the norm forever (though I can say the same thing about fleece, which I just learned is a fairly new invention).
Recycling is not taken for grated where I live now. Not everyone in my neighborhood uses a little yellow bin for plastic and aluminum, or bundles every last scrap of paper. There’s a rumor going around at work (where we were only recently able to recycle more than newspaper) that contents in the blue recycle bins go out with the regular trash.
I end up generating one of two reactions among my East Coast neighbors and acquaintances. (1) I am shocked that recycling is unavailable and that limited options go unused. (2) They are shocked that I am not more concerned about it—those here who actually recycle are much more passionate about it than I am. They spent their college and young adult years fighting for the right; I see it as the norm.
This is a siloed viewpoint, as many of mine are. I estimate I’m working with somewhere between 5 and 10 data points.
But I’m impressed and proud to see my hometown try to improve the world, even if preliminary and unscientific polls (click “view results”) indicate current Seattlites don’t like it. Because similar innovations are years—maybe even decades—away from implementation in my new home.
Posted: July 21st, 2007 by allegra under allegra.
Comments: 3
Comments
Comment from Amber
Time: July 21, 2007, 1:15 pm
The town I live in rolled out a food scrap recycling program a couple years ago, but it seems like only a handful of people actually participate in it. We do (and it seems hard to imagine throwing food waste away at this point - I always cringe when I see people do it) and it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but you’d think by some people’s reactions that they were required to sort food into its molecular components by their reactions.
I’m with you btw on the recycling thing - it has always been ubiquitous where I’ve lived, although I certainly have seen the lack when I’ve travelled. I’ve been known to carry empty containers around with me when travelling until find a place when I can recycle them! I’m not sure if I would be more up in arms about it if I were to move somewhere where it was not always available… and I rather hope that I don’t get the chance, since I’m really hoping that this current move will be out last for a really, really long time!
Comment from Emily
Time: July 21, 2007, 6:41 pm
One of the things that I really detest about living in a condo complex here is that we don’t have the option of recycling. Within the complex, our only choice is a big green garbage dumpster. I can (and do) take anything with a CA redemption value to a reclamation point outside the grocery store where I shop, but there is nowhere to take aluminum cans, or plastic milk jugs, or glass spaghetti jars, or plain old paper (and oh, it kills me to throw away all the junk mail we get!) It seems insane to me - after all, I grew up in a little tiny town recycling nearly everything - that such opportunities seem to be unavailable in the very large metropolis that is Orange County.
Anyway, good for Seattle. 
Comment from sarah marie
Time: July 26, 2007, 10:04 am
Ooh, I have had the same “recycling culture shock” you’re describing. In our town, Nathan and I are permitted to recycle a small amount of cardboard bound into a little package every other Monday. Nice. 
I feel awful throwing away paper junk mail and metal cans, and it’s such a contrast from California, where we recycled absolutely everything.
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