The Recycling Conundrum

So I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the country, but here in Oregon there has been a monumental ground shift in how recycling is done, and it's changing the way we do things around the house here.

For a couple of months when we were just getting adjusted to living here, we did absolutely no recycling here, and felt awful about it. Milk jugs, peanut butter jars, cardboard boxes...all went into the dumpster on the "farm" end of the property. As the area we live in is not considered a residential area, there simply was no recycling pick-up, just industrial trash, which we were allowed to put our trash bags in.

But about that time, Oregon trash pick-up companies also started notifying their customers that recycling rules were changing, due to the fact that China was no longer accepting mixed recycling. This was a shock for many, including ourselves, as we had no idea all that recycling waste we all created was being put on massive container ships and sent overseas. Talk about having a huge carbon footprint! And for garbage, to boot. 

So the new rules here are that you can ONLY recycle plastic containers marked #1 or #2 (milk or large water bottles), and only if they are 12 or more ounces, and only if they are washed thoroughly and dried before being put into the bin. Clean paper and cardboard is OK. Shredded paper, egg cartons, styrofoam, dirty pizza boxes, and clam shell packaging are not recyclable at all. Cans and bottles are. 

The biggest thing for us is that all those "other" plastic containers, either with other numbers or that are small, will no longer be acceptable. Everything from the orange extract bottle you have in your cupboard to your yogurt carton, your "cardboard" milk carton, to the big plastic container of pretzels you got at Costco last month. Into the dumpster they go, for all eternity or however many thousands of years it takes them to break down.

Were we foolish to imagine there was someone at the recycling center sorting our #1 gallon water jugs from our #5 single serve yogurt cartons? I guess it's financially unrealistic to think of someone either here or in China doing so. 

Anyway, on a brighter note, we've managed to find a waste transfer station close by that accepts recycling, and we've started up again with what we can recycle, separating everything, washing it, and then running it down to the center to be put into separate bins. But while I feel better about the things we are once again recycling, I feel pretty disappointed about all the things we can't recycle, especially since most have the circle with the number at the bottom, meaning it is, in fact, possible to recycle it in some theoretical universe.

So how are things in the blue can in your town? Have the rules changed, or is it business as usual? One of the basic tenants of homesteading is to reduce one's carbon footprint, but I feel with these new rules our footprint just got a lot bigger, and I'm not sure what we can do about it. 

Use/enjoy it. Nothing lasts forever.

Use it! Enjoy it! Because it's beautiful, and because...

This is the time of year when we all start breaking out our winter/holiday finery, including tablecloths, decorations and even special furniture.  This last weekend I bid in another online auction and got this gorgeous mahogany dining room table for $200. (Thanksgiving on my mind! It has TWO leaves and can expand to 120 inches!) 

I know many people who have dining room tables like this in their formal dining room, and rarely use them. Which seems like a shame to me. I think the things we buy should be used and enjoyed. That's why we don't have a breakfast area, and instead eat all our meals at the one dining room table, thereby visiting with it almost every day. It's gorgeous, so why not look at it every time we sit down to a meal?

I remember going to an antique store several years ago which featured toys for sale -- in their original boxes, unopened. Apparently that is the gold standard for buying these kinds of things -- toys like Barbie dolls and stuffed animals are highest priced in their original wrappings, unused.

How sad that we relegate such things to uselessness in order to keep their value. It's one thing to take care of what you own to make sure it lasts a long time, but entirely another to never enjoy it or never use it for the purpose for which it was intended...gee, and I thought formal dining rooms people rarely went into was sad.

About 18 years ago, my mother found an antique sideboard at a junk store, liked it and purchased it for me at the bargain basement price of $100. Upon doing a little online research, we discovered that it was a one-of-a-kind Brown-Saltman piece from the 1930's and was probably worth between $4,000 - $10,000. She was thrilled. I was dismayed. The insurance company was helpful in putting together a policy for it. Which meant, as a struggling single mom and beginning teacher, I was now in possession of a piece of furniture that needed its own insurance policy. I felt a little sick.

For months I worried about the piece, not putting anything on it, not allowing the kids within a mile of it. I was almost afraid of it, yet at the same time resentful -- how had I unluckily come into possession of something which clearly demanded so much respect as to not be touched or used?

And then my best friend visited and told me I needed to use it and enjoy it. She said that was what it was created for. And if an accident happened -- it got scuffed, dented or scratched -- well, nothing lasts for ever, she said.  

because....

The message is the same, whether it's home furnishings or something even more intricate yet also temporary: the sand mandalas the Buddhist monks spend months creating, only to to pause for one moment at it's completion and behold its beauty before sweeping it away, forever gone. The message is clear: Use it!  Enjoy it! Because nothing lasts forever. And an unused toy wrapped in a box is worth nothing, because it's never fulfilled it's purpose of being played with and loved by a child. I don't care what the auction house says.  

The fact is, if it's a creation made by man or even in nature, it has a life expectancy. Give it a life worth living by using it, for heaven's sake.

Nothing lasts forever.

A deal...more like a STEAL!

Mikasa votives -- the whole batch cost a quarter!

Last week my neighbor called and told me the local party rental company was having a "garage sale" at their warehouse downtown.  It was a day I was working, but luckily we got slow in the afternoon and I was able to get off early, head down there and see exactly what they were getting rid of. The call of a good deal is a siren song to me, almost as much as good wine. Usually less expensive, too!

I found three decent tablecloths (the fancy linen kind event producers use) at four dollars each, in white, black and brown.  The black one will need a patch, but the other two are perfect the way they are. I also picked up five Mikasa crystal votive holders (25 cents for all five).

Love these -- and check out the $4 tablecloth to the right!

And the steal of the century was these wooden folding chairs for two dollars each.  I bought sixteen!

So after feeling like a total deal glutton, I headed home and am going to begin refinishing the chairs this week.  Since the white seats are that awful leather-look plastic, perhaps best known for making the backs of your legs always stick to them if you happen to be sitting in a short skirt or some shorts, I am recovering them with fabric scraps I've saved over the years. That should increase the color factor and decrease the "ouch" factor considerably.

 So every chair will have a different fabric bottom.  Since the seat of these chairs remove super-easily, this will be a very easy part of the project.

Colorful seating

The other thing I've decided is that after some sanding, I'm going to paint each chair black, using chalk paint or some other kind of matte paint. The black should really set off the colors on the seats, and will also make them look both elegant and funky.

I can't wait to host some outdoor dinners this year and use these chairs, and I'm so happy they were able to come home with me and start a whole new life.

I can't guarantee what kind of asses were sitting in them at the hundreds of weddings they probably attended, but all the ones here are pretty cool, so I like to think they've found a good home.

Second (third, fourth....) Harvest

A few weeks ago, I cut away at my spinach plants, reaping a good harvest but leaving each stalk intact with a few leaves on each one.  Yesterday, I finally pulled the plants out and removed another big bowl's worth of spinach leaves. It was a marvelous second harvest of some plants most other gardeners would have removed after the first harvest, either because they didn't think they would produce again, or to make room for something else.

But many plants will come back again if you just harvest carefully, and leave enough leaves on the plant for photosynthesis to happen, with roots intact.

This cabbage plant is on its third season of production.  It was planted in winter 2012, and since then has produced no less than six heads of lettuce.  This started because I was initially too lazy to pull out the plant's roots, so I cut the cabbage head off and just left the rest of it alone in the bed.  Lo and behold, come fall 2013, there were another couple of heads to harvest from the same plant.  And now, in summer 2014, there are two more. The leaves may be bug-eaten and sorry looking, but the head of cabbage is still good.  Just in time for summer slaw.

And last summer, I again got lazy at the end of the growing season (if you're sensing a trend here, you're right) and left a few tomatoes on the vine, to ripen, fall into the dirt, and disperse their seeds.  And I have these volunteer tomatoes to show for it, every bit as big and lovely as the ones I painstakingly grew in the solarium this spring.

We talk a lot about the wisdom of recycling, but rarely do most of us think of allowing our plants to recycle themselves. 

For success like this, all it takes is being too busy to garden (and/or plain old laziness), some serious procrastination and some patience or just a willingness to look away for awhile while Mother Nature works her magic.

Waste not, want not

A few months ago, I purchased a bag of dove and quail feed for my pigeon and two doves.  Inside the bag were some pea seeds, which were uneaten by any of the birds, and therefore fell onto the floor of the flight cage, where they remained until I cleaned it out. What a waste.

After being collected and mixed in with the chicken waste and a bunch of straw, I spread the mixture over one of our raised beds to sit and compost for a few months.  I covered the bed with a black tarp, and in a few weeks when I removed it, lo and behold, the peas had sprouted. Not a waste at all.

At that point I decided I could use a good nitrogen fixer in the soil as well as a good cover crop, so the peas got to stay.  They grew and eventually blossomed into gorgeous colors of all kinds -- white, pink, red and salmon.  Definitely not a waste.

They formed pea pods, but the pod casings themselves were too tough for them to be eaten as snap peas.  What a waste.

 But instead I let them ripen and picked them with the goal of shelling them. Not a waste after all.

Tonight I had green peas with dinner, cooked lightly and covered in butter.  Perfect. Now the peas are in my belly and the pods are back in the compost pile, where they will break down and become soil for new plants.  No waste here. Once the peas are broken down by my digestive system, they'll end up being eliminated by my body and head through the septic tank out into the leach field to return to the earth that way, while the pods will stay stay topside and grow some new plants as they decompose.

In the next couple of weeks, I will plow down the pea plants remaining and they will return to the soil to provide nitrogen for the next thing that's going to be planted there.  Perhaps if I'm lucky, a few ripe peas will go to seed and give me another crop of peas. 

Compost, plants, flowers, food, compost.  What a lovely cycle, and not a bit of waste in it, if you just relax and let nature take its own course.

Starbucks

Not recyclable.

Did you know the Starbucks paper coffee cups are not recyclable?  Although they feel like paper, they are actually lined on the inside with a thin coating of plastic to help stop the cup from soaking through, and recycling places only accept them in bulk.  And since most people leave with their cups, Starbucks does not recycle them, and neither does your regular trash pick up.

The only way to make the whole cafe mocha process more eco-friendly is to go ahead and purchase one of their permanent plastic coffee "travelers" for sale, which are dishwasher safe and can be used again and again.

I'm never one to shill for Corporate America, but I've been taking those stupid Starbucks "paper" coffee cups out of the store for years and carefully washing them and putting them in the recycling bin at home once they were empty.  All for naught, it turns out. In order to be part of the solution, not the problem, we should really have invested in a few of those plastic travelers for purchase and just re-used them.

Oh course if your tastes run more towards the cold drinks, you are safe. The large plastic "glasses" they serve those in ARE recyclable.  So take the cold mocha frappucino over the warm latte, I suppose, until you break down and buy yourself a re-usable hot coffee container.

Of course, I guess we could always show up with a Mason Jar and see if they'd fill that. Might be worth it, if just to see the reaction from the barista behind the counter.