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June 01, 2005
RRR!
RRR?? Yup, Recycle, Reuse, Reduce! Didn't you learn the 3 R's in grade school?
When I was a kid, I wanted to recycle EVERYTHING. I grew up in California and recycling is sort of a big deal out there. I honestly could not tell you where a recycling center in this state is, I couldn't name one! But in California, around my old neighborhood alone, my family must have visited 2 or 3 in very close proximity. Recycling was a sort of tradition with my family. For some reason, we (the children) thought pop tabs were worth a lot of money. So we picked the tabs off of every can that we could find and stuffed them into jars. But, that wasn't before we smashed the pop cans (in which case was then known as SODA to us, you Minnesotans!) with our feet. We wore shoes, of course. I actually remember carrying around trash bags filled with pop cans, just banging and clanging around. How we collected so many pop cans, I am not certain! But we hunted for those things, picked them out from garbage cans and streets (okay, we were young!), and lurked around when our families had big gatherings, waiting to steal every single empty soda can and if there were less than half left, we'd dump it! Oh, the victory... Anyway, when we finally had enough bags to fill my parents' mini van, we hauled em over to a recycling center where they weighed the bags and gave you cold...hard...CA$h for our hard work. I'm serious, I was the oldest of the whole bunch, and I was probably 10 years old. Memory is faint, but I believe we receieved about 2 or 3 dollars per bag? It was a lot of money to us at the time! Most importantly, money that we worked hard for! Money that we knew was doing the environment good, we were making clean up easier for our parents more or less.... but we were encouraged nonetheless.
Currently, I live in a house with 5 other girls and it gets difficult to recycle everything. So we definitely try, but it's not simple at all! If I don't see one of those designated areas for plastics/bottles/cans when I have to toss a can or bottle away, I feel guilty like no other!
Posted by thao0226 at June 1, 2005 02:22 PM | Reflections
Comments
That's a great story about the way family practices can instill enviromental values. The curbside recycling in many Minnesota communites, including Minneapolis, is the reason we don't see recycling centers scattered around these parts.
Posted by: Tim G. at June 1, 2005 03:29 PM
That totally reminds me of my dad and I. We would walk around with garbage bags and those claw picker-upper things. We would just walk around and pick up garbage and pop cans and plastic bottles. People would ask us why, and we were like, "just 'cause."
Posted by: Sarah at June 1, 2005 05:06 PM