Going Green
- December 28, 2007
Bar Owners Are Helping Me ‘Go Green’
North Carolina lawmakers have made keeping my New Year’s resolution so much easier. That’s because starting next week state law will require bars and restaurants to recycle beer and wine bottles. My resolution is to recycle everything that the city of Raleigh collects curbside.
This resolution shouldn’t be too hard for me to keep, because I already toss all my recyclables into a bin each week … right down to my toilet paper rolls. But when I’m at work, I’ll toss my plastic half-and-half containers into the trash. This never bothered me until I noticed my former roommate and coworker, Tim, keep a stack of recyclables at his desk to be brought home. Likewise, when I go to a restaurant or a bar, I let the staff throw out my plastic cups and glass bottles.
But, under my resolution, I plan to be more like Tim and take all my recyclables home and dispose of them properly. I hadn’t considered that my trips to the bar might require me to bring an oversized bag for all my bottles or, as an alternative, only drink what’s on tap. But it’s a moot point now, thanks to this new law.
What will be interesting, of course, is how it’s enforced. Anyone else willing to take on my recycling resolution?
What I'm Doing
7 Responses to “Bar Owners Are Helping Me ‘Go Green’”
The only bummer is that regardless of the number in the triangle on the bottom of your plastic, nowhere in NC (except perhaps Buncombe County) recycles things like yogurt cups, individual half-and-half cups, and plastic drinking cups…
boo, but unless the plastic is bottle-shaped (smaller opening than the rest of it), it’s getting dumped in the landfill anyhow.
Can we petition the Triangle’s recycling centers / waste management to start recycling all plastics? Seriously.
By Ashley Sue on Dec 28, 2007
Hey, btw, kudos on your commitment to making a difference… you are one of only three people I know who recycle even their tp rolls.
By Ashley Sue on Dec 28, 2007
So, does that mean someone actually takes the yogurt cups out of the recycling bin during the sorting process and throws them in the trash? Please tell me this is not true!
By gskalski on Dec 28, 2007
Yep. Unfortunately, at the waste management center, some employees sort through all the recycling simply to remove all non-bottle plastics, as well as originally mis-sorted recyclables and items that should have just ended up in the trash. Then, in the trash pile it ends up ~ but the process of having to re-sort it for people ends up costing more time and tax money than if it were done properly to begin with. Allowing improper items through also ends up costing big, in the way of creating unusable materials, defeating the purpose of recycling.
I hope to vlog from the waste management facilities here in the Triangle shortly after New Years. That should be neat to see ~ have you seen the Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe when he works in a recycling facility helping sort through metals? It’s really informative too (and funny).
By Ashley Sue on Dec 28, 2007
Confession: I don’t recycle!
Going to try to change that in 2008. I feel better now, I’ll take you up on the recycling resolution.
By wsutton on Dec 28, 2007
wsutton ~ check out http://www.truegreenconfessions.com... you can let the burden of the truth come off you.
By Ashley Sue on Dec 28, 2007
Wow…hadn’t ever thought of recycling toilet paper rolls. I will be sure to do so from now on. I have always been frustrated with the plastic rules that don’t make any sense. So in my efforts to go green, I’ve been focusing on the reduce and reuse portion of the famous slogan. Cutting back on paper towels, taking my own bags to the grocery store…does anyone have any other ideas how to reduce and reuse so as to alleviate the recycle bit?
By Joey on Dec 28, 2007