THE GREEN MONSTER

Chris and I have become addicted to the new Planet Green channel. It’s a really great channel with the exception of Adrian Grenier’s show Alter Eco, which would be great if they would reduce the cheese by a factor of 20. The other day I was watching a segment on G Word about a guy who saved his garbage for a year. At first you might be thinking “Hoarder!”, but this guy was really neat about it. He rinsed out and washed stuff and neatly organized it. He said that the first thing he realized was that he bought a lot of prepackaged foods. Well, Duh! Don’t we all? Since this show, I’ve become slightly obsessed about my trash. I take wrappers and bags home from my lunch at work and the more I think about product packaging the more annoyed I get. I try to buy healthy, organic foods, but I’ve noticed that many of the packaged organic foods do not have recycling information on them. Shouldn’t your organic food come in recyclable packaging or at least some sort of information on if you can put it in the recycling bin?

The information is out there, but it’s not easy to find. The same is true on where to take CFC light bulbs. I hunted for recycling drop-off places for light bulbs for an hour yesterday. I came across a story about Wal-Mart collecting them for one day only…as a promotional stunt. You can purchase a recycle kit from Waste Management for $25. It holds up to 18 bulbs, but the thing is I don’t want to wait around. I have two bulbs and it will probably be another year before I have one more to add to the pile. I have enough crap sitting around in storage as it is. I just want to take the two bulbs with me when I’m out and about and drop them into a box on the way into a store, like Wal-Mart, or Lowes, or Target.

People are willing to recycle if it’s made easy. It shouldn’t be complicated. I shouldn’t have to hunt for information on whether or not it’s safe to put a product in the recycle bin.