This week marked a wonderful addition to Philadelphia’s Recycling program… we can now recycle plastic drinking bottles, cardboard & paper in a commingled pick-up tray with the glass and cans.
People were amazed. How will they be sorted? Won’t it be nice? Oh, and WHICH plastics can I recycle? 1 & 2 you say?
The rest of the trash goes into landfill… or the Delaware River… or to the Jersey Shore… or it gets swept along to the ocean deep, to resurface only after the Giant Squid dies of suffocation…
Meanwhile, Kamikatsu, Japan goes ‘Zero Waste’
You now, I’ve lived in Los Angeles, and in the Washingtonian and Bostonian Burbs… And everywhere I go people are just so terribly amazed by their recycling programs… and Phila’s has been the most meager of them all. Folks are AWED that the occasional 2liter (when they feel like turning it in) can get turned into a park bench! WOW!
… while MOST of their trash is burned or buried or sunk. Us dumb Americans are so diddly daft.
WELL – as for me and my house, I FINALLY have a yard and access to compost & mulch piles. I recently turned my first batch of mulch and compost into my previously dead yard, and the pumpkins, mint, and sunflowers look great. My little Urban Garden is getting better all the Thyme.
AND – as for Philadelphia’s Recycling program… it might encourage some of my neighbors to start recycling, but all it’s done for me is eliminate my once-a-month plastic and paper run to the neighborhood recycling center.
Ah well. Baby Steps. Baby Steps.
