Trash Talk
We’re all guilty of it! Call it trash rubbish, garbage or debris, we all create it and dispose of it. What, where and how become the issues. In Garland we have green bins and blue bins, and everything that does not go down a kitchen disposal and into the drain, goes into one of those. Which one, and why?
Garbage is a messy business, and we spend as little time as possible talking or even thinking about it. We choose the most expeditious ways possible to rid ourselves of our waste materials. We were recently given those blue bins to use for recyclables, to be emptied by automated blue trucks; untouched by human hands. It would probably work very smoothly if we were aware of what and what not to put in the darn things.
Plastics are supposedly blue bin items, so many of us have thought that would include plastic bags, and so we have dutifully placed them in that blue bin. I was recently informed, by an expert in the recycling field, that those bags should be thrown into the green bins. Why not the blue bin, I asked. “Those plastic bags clog up the conveyors at the recycling center, I was told. How sad! So they wind up in landfills and continue to exist on the planet for the next several hundred years. They wash up on our beaches, they are a blight on our planet and we all contribute to the problem by using them.
It’s impossible to come home from most grocery stores without a half dozen plastic bags. In our area it appears that only ALDI and the big box stores seem to be able to function without them. Why hasn’t the Environmental Protection Agency placed a ban on plastic bags? There are probably a quadrillion of them messing up our environment right now, but we can take it upon ourselves to stop their proliferation by merely refusing to bring them home. That would stop the disposal problem, now wouldn’t it? We can also press our retail chains to develop an ecological conscientiousness.
In the meantime, we’ve been advised that there are instructions for proper use posted on the lids of those blue bins. Who knew? One of these days, when you have absolutely nothing else to do, go outside and read those labels on your trash bins. It’s on our to do list.
Nancy Ghirla
Email: [email protected]
Social