Last week, I wrote about my bathroom makeover. In addition to creating a nicer looking bathroom, our makeover created a ton of packaging waste.
Fortunately, I managed to get away with actually throwing away just a few twist ties, some strapping bands, and some painting material — tape and the like.
Here’s what the waste looked like in our living room after we finished unpacking:
(Yeah, it kind of looked blurry in real life too.)
The piles included:
- One huge box entirely filled with block Styrofoam.
- A great big stack of corrugated cardboard from the boxes themselves.
- Several sheets of instructions, etc.
- A variety of small plastic bags that contained screws and other hardware.
- A large shopping bag full of padded foam wrap.
- Several linear yards of plastic shrink roll — the stuff that straps two boxes together for shipping.
Here’s what I did with it:
- The sheets of paper went right into our city recycling bin.
- The plastic bags and plastic sheeting went into our plastic recycling, which I take over to our local grocery store every week.
- I spent 15 minutes one morning with a box cutter, and cut the corrugated cardboard into pieces that fit into our city recycling bin.
- We delivered the shopping bag full of padded foam wrap to our local pack and ship store for reuse.
That left just the block Styrofoam. In addition to our big box, I had a small bag of block Styrofoam in my office closet. I’ve been saving it from various packages, along with plastic yogurt tubs that are not recyclable in our curbside recycling program.
I decided the time was ripe for a trip to EcoCycle in Boulder. EcoCycle is known as one of the most advanced recycling centers in the United States. In addition to municipal recycling programs in Boulder, they operate a Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM).
That’s the recycling center in the picture at the top. You drive up next to a building, tell them what you have to recycle, and pay any necessary fees. (And you know it’s Boulder when the garbage-station attendant is cute, helpful and brainy.) My carload of Styrofoam cost me nothing to recycle. The yogurt tubs go directly into their single-stream recycling program. The only thing I had to pay to recycle was for three bicycle tires that I brought along. Those cost $.50 each, for a grand total of $1.50. ** EDIT April 2010 – EcoCycle now charges a small drop-off fee to non-Boulder residents.**
They had an ingenious system for recycling Styrofoam. I had to take my box and bag up the steps of this little platform. Beside the platform, they had strung up some giant plastic bags into which I dumped my Styrofoam.
After that, I drove to the dumpsters along the side and dropped off my materials in the appropriate bins. Then we were free of our responsibility and ready to run some other errands while we were in the area.
I wish we had such excellent recycling services in my city. But I am grateful that they at least exist within driving distance. Was it worth it to drive 30 miles to recycle the stuff? Probably, as long as I let it pile up and only go once a year or so. I learned that they also recycle milk and juice cartons and tetra-paks, so I have started a bag in my storage room for those materials.
How about you? How are your recycling services? What do you do when you have difficult-to-recycle materials?
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Comments ( 9 )
[...] of styrofoam (about 9″ square), both about 1/2″ thick. These will be recycled on a special trip to Eco-Cycle one day; meanwhile, they’ll join the rest of the difficult recyclables in a bag in my [...]
IKEA shelves packaged with minimal waste, no word on adhesives « Cheap Like Me added these pithy words on Dec 19 08 at 11:43 am[...] 6. Recycle paper, cardboard, metal, plastic – YES – And in fact, we are recycling more types of plastic (including tubs and plastic caps) and materials like Styrofoam through special occasional trips to Ecocycle. [...]
What green actions do I still do? « Cheap Like Me added these pithy words on Jan 27 09 at 3:03 am[...] distance. For instance, I can take some more challenging recyclable materials (for a fee) to a center in Boulder, where the city is deeply committed to [...]
Wednesday on waste: Recycling – do you have it? | Cheap Like Me added these pithy words on Mar 17 10 at 9:24 amJust wanted to say what a great blog.
It’s amazing how much packaging you can accumulate these days. I live in London and my council is pretty behind with it’s recycling initiatives which is such a shame.
Whether on purpose or by inefficiency they make it really hard for households to recycle (pick up days keep changing, if you live in an apartment and want a recycling box they make you PAY for one etc etc). There isn’t a recycling centre nearby where we can take things either. Hopefully one day our recycling initiatives will catch up with you guys!
Jade
Jade added these pithy words on
Aug 06 08 at
1:55 pm
It is so funny that you wrote about this now. Ever since attending a “recycling round up” here in Portland, OR in May, I have been saving every scrap of plastic that comes in to our house. I had a vague notion that either there would be another “recycling round up” or I might find a place to bring it. Monday I took a day off from work and one of my tasks was to recycle all the plastic. I took it to a place called Far West Fibers that I heard about from some friends. It was totally self serve. They ask for a $2 donation. I was able to recycle everying except some foam type items – I just had to sort through it all. I am going to take the foam items to a place in town called Scrap. The foam pieces are brightly colored and used to be a box / picture frame but my daughter was a little too hard on it. Scrap takes all sorts of art supplies, books, fabric, etc and sells it for a small fee.
erin added these pithy words on
Aug 06 08 at
2:01 pm
@Jade, thank you!
@Erin, funny … recycling makes me a bit squirrelish … I have the recycling bin outside, and separate bags inside for yogurt tubs, plastic caps, cotton from bottles, and now milk cartons …
cheaplikeme added these pithy words on
Aug 06 08 at
2:44 pm
Wow we may have passed each other today! I was there with my compost from my daughter’s ( no waste) birthday party! I love Eco Cycle. I live in Superior, just 5 min east of Boulder! How cool! Another eco blogger lives in my general area!!
Ellen Moeller added these pithy words on
Aug 06 08 at
9:11 pm
Great Job, not many recycling centers out here in the Midwest. My trip to the “ecocenter” is alot more of a trip, a lot less fun.
Love your blog..linked you on my blogroll.
twofish4 added these pithy words on
Aug 07 08 at
11:11 am
We do the same thing, cheap. We save everything up and schedule twice-annual trips to EcoCycle for all of those crazy things we can’t get rid of, like tetra-paks, and take the rest of the day to do things like go to the Boulder Farmer’s Market for planting garlic or what have you. It’s a good use of our time, I think. Thanks for the reminder that I need to go look at our “stash” and see if it’s time.
Margaret added these pithy words on
Aug 12 08 at
7:31 am
