Bringing Home My Recyclables

I have a confession.  I bring home as many recyclable things as I can.  I pick up recycling around town and I bring it home from vacation when I can't find anywhere to recycle it.  And this is why:

When we were in Wyoming over the summer, there was this great public building with bathrooms and big bins for all types of recycling in pristine Jackson.  Chicago has recycling and solar powered compacting trash bins all over the city.  But our last two trips were harder.  Miami was difficult with the seemingly endless stream of plastic cups but Aruba was impossible!  

After several failed attempts to locate anywhere I could take plastic, glass, or paper for recycling, I finally made room in my backpack and come home with this:

We try to travel light by each taking a single travel backpack, so I wasn't able to bring home much of my nemesis, plastic, but I did manage to bring back and recycle all the paper we (somehow) accumulated.

You might be wondering why this is a confession.  It's not a secret that I recycle.  But bringing it home on an airplane?!  I know.  I know!  I have a problem.  I can't even bear to figure out if it's a net energy loss since I'm flying it home.  (My guess is that, yes, it is.  I told you I have a problem!)  It's just so disheartening watching the trash can fill.

Seriously, I can't stop.  I'd already put this in our car before we discovered that beach in the first picture.

Let me explain.  Not my own habits but the reason the beach looks like that.  Arubans are not going around throwing plastic on their beaches.  (Well, probably some are.)  No, that beach looks like that from people like us.  Trash that doesn't make it into a landfill, more often than not, ends up in the water somewhere.  And things that end up in rivers, lakes, and oceans end up on a beach or in an animal - including humans!  This book gives a wonderful explanation about the whole waste/water/gyre cycle.  I'm glad I read it before seeing this beach.

At least then I knew not to tut-tut the friendly people of Aruba.  That didn't do much for my growing "obsession" with picking up after others though...

Peace,

Stacey