I less than 3 Recycling

You can complain about a lot of things in Baltimore, but since the introduction of single-stream recycling and weekly recycling pick up, accessibility and ease of recycling is not one of them. I freaking love to recycle, so much so that I wonder if perhaps I'm getting a little too compulsive about it. To see if you love recycling as much as me, check off the items that you recycle:

• Empty water/Gatorade/juice bottles/milk jugs
• Empty beer/wine bottles
• Junk mail
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Personal mail that you don't need (shredded first, of course)
• Empty cans from like canned vegetables
• Empty glass jars (from like salsa or whatever)
• Cardboard boxes
• Kleenex boxes (I rip out the plastic at the top of the box first)
• Box from your microwaveable dinner
• Empty bottles that you finish in the car and could throw in a trash can at the gas station but instead take home to recycle (I'm probably 50% on this one)
• Pieces of note paper you no longer need
• Post-it notes you no longer need (at work)
• The cardboard thing they give you to insulate your hand from the coffee at Starbucks.
• Plastic yogurt/pudding containers (wash them out first!)
• Receipts from the grocery store / Target, etc.
• Empty soda can/bottles you see lying on top of the trash at work when you know there's a recycle bin just outside the conference room/around the corner
• Same scenario, but your co-workers are present
• Clean-looking plastic bottles lying on the street while you're walk towards your house (sometimes)
• Paperboard packaging for gum (like Orbitz)
• Empty boxes of anything (ex: Band-aids, granola bars, cereal, anything...)
• Cardboard tube from your paper towels
• Cardboard tube from your toilet paper (I think I catch about 50-70% of them) (home only)
• Paper packet from Sugar in the Raw (<50%>

So that was a list of things I habitually recycle. Yes, I really recycle all that stuff. I just like doing it. Even when it's just a receipt from Safeway, I feel better about it throwing it in my big yellow bin. I admit, the sugar packet thing is sort of ridiculous and I only do it sometimes. Also, I think my co-workers think I'm a little silly for grabbing empty soda cans off the top of the trash can and tossing them in the next recycling bin, but it's just so easy...

I feel like it's sort of the least I can do to reduce waste. For example, the other day someone had left a giant box outside their office with the word "TRASH" written on it in large print so the janitors would take it away. I went and got a marker and crossed out "TRASH" and wrote "RECYCLING". I'll never know if it worked, but I feel like I tried to reduce waste a little.

Speaking of recycling, if you are a company that ships things or a purchasing manager, please use/request recycling packaging. I much prefer to be able to recycle my packaging that have to throw away a bunch of packing peanuts. Packing peanuts are like the worst invention ever. Let's get a bunch of styrofoam and use it once for packaging! Let's guarantee it heads straight to the landfill.

Also, does it make anyone else mad that we still have disposal styrofoam cups in this country? Why don't we just outright ban them? If you want your coffee warm, but a travel mug!

With frustrations about single use, non-bio-degradable items like that out there, doesn't that make you want to recycle every damn little piece of paper you can?