Mary Harwell Sayler : waste

August 9, 2021

Too much garbage? Break the cycle!

In the almost eighteen years we’ve been in our home, I’ve filled and faithfully set out the recycling bin every week – until now! Reportedly, a shortage of workers recently caused pickup to cease, so our paper, plastics, foil wrappers, and aluminum cans have wound up in the back of the regular garbage truck! Bummer! So what’s an environmentally conscious person to do?

Someone suggested I take my own recyclable wastes to the town dump, which isn’t far, but I lack both a truck and the energy. Nor do I see myself applying for a job with a recycling company, which I might actually have considered, say, thirty years ago.

But here’s the thing: Thirty (okay, forty) years ago, I did not have much to recycle. For one thing, we lived in the country and had fresh vegetables, so I don’t remember buying anything but coffee in a can. To us, however, a “can” was a glass Mason jar filled with fruit or veggies, steam-bathed, and capped at home. When it came to colas, kids weren’t allowed, and my soft drinks mainly came with a restaurant hamburger – and a paper straw.

Obviously, times have changed, but did they need to change this much? I don’t want to turn back the clock, but I do want to ways to wave off a flood of garbage. If you do too, I hope you’ll share your ideas in the Comments section below, and maybe we can stop this trashy tsunami.

For starters, here’s what came to mind:

Get cloth napkins off the shelf and onto the table.
Buy eggs in those greyish cardboardy crates of 18 or 24 instead of plastic by the dozens.
Ask the grocer’s meat department to use butcher paper.
Wrap sandwiches in wax paper.
Keep leftovers in glass containers with lids.
Buy fresh or frozen foods in lieu of canned.
Go back to drinking milk and squeezing juice.
Replace soft drinks with tea, coffee, or, better yet, water!
Sip through a stainless-steel straw. (I found a set online.)
Shop with cloth bags.
Wear washable masks.