Moral Dilema

Everyone who REALLY knows me, knows 2 things...I always try to do what is right, play by the book and I'm frugal...that comes from being a Johnston through & through. My parents taught me well, especially Dad. The things he could do with a roll of yellow blasting wire. I think Joe still has the shortest piece left from cleaning out Dad's garage before we sold the house.

So I have 2 very distinct directions pulling at me.
  1. My effort in doing what I can to reduce, recycle and re-use. I Freecycle, I donate gently used clothes and household items to charities, I home compost,I try and remember my canvas totes and say No to that extra plastic bag for a 4 l jug of milk. I drive to the Recycle Depot - no curbside pick up here - with my tins, glass jars, milk jugs, newspaper, mixed paper and cardboard and in summer, grass clippings..
  2. Our lovely little town which is blossoming at a alarming rate - but we love our home, the area and our great neighbours - and the town has upped our garbage pick up fees. It is just short of $15 per month and we have a limit of 4 garbage bags. Twice a year - fall & spring they up the limit to 1 pick up of 12 bags so you can do some serious tossing.
I have reduced our curbside garbage to ...get this... ~ 5 bags per month! So that works out to $3 per bag for me as opposed to the folks down the straight who religiously put out the maximum each and every week! So their garbage is worth $0.94 each bag.

Is that fair? Is that an example of one man's trash is another's treasures! Boy the treasures I must have!!!!!!

Please comment, I know the folks on the coast have stringent guidelines about this...not sure I want to save all my table scraps for 2 weeks in the summer before they will get picked up...I heard about Monica's run with some maggots!!!!! YUCKY!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I live in an apt building with NO recycle program, all is expected to hit the trash. Whats up with that? Hike saves all his papers and recycles them at his friends place once a month and I rinse bottles/jars and stash them on the balcony till Frank remembers to take them to his place for recyceling pick up. Kinds sucks, but we do what we can! I say as long as the effort is there, way to go!!
Kris.

Lesley said...

We have a lot of recycle depots in the city but I've often thought about paying the $10/month for curbside pickup. With as many kids as we have during the day we go through a lot of milk jugs, cardboard boxes and dirty diapers...gross...

We have no limit to garbage - yet- but I'm sure it's coming.

New MrsIngram said...

A little late but I thought I'd respond anyway.

We have a garbage bag limit (just recently reduced again) to 6 bags every two weeks .. the thing is now people have just run out and bought bigger bags, industrial size, you can then stick two regular bags in those bigs ones. So now the city is talking about setting a limit on the size of the bag as well, which makes total sense!

We however compost, we save our bottles and milk jugs, we break down all cardboard and paper and put that out to the curb as well. We've gotten real good with the garbage where we can miss a pick up altogether and still stay within our limits on the next one. We weren't always like that though, I remember when we didn't have to watch what we were putting out because we were renting in a complex and we'd put out about a bag every other day! Sad eh?