One of my most embarrassing experiences while living in Victoria B.C. was my landlord yelling at me for not recycling my Nutella jar.
“Uh, I’m sorry. We don’t recycle that where I live.”
She was mortified. I had to explain to her that when I had left our recycling depot had just expanded to include the processing of mixed paper, cardboard, and some plastics.
It was a very awkward experience having her train me on the proper procedure of recycling. And fair enough, she didn’t want to get charged for not appropriately distributing recyclables in the proper bins and bags. Who knew you could get charged for that?
I’ve always been conscientious of recycling. In elementary school I was apart of a recycling program that shredded paper to send to facilities for rescued animals.
When we used to have a garden, I remember getting excited about smashing the eggs shells we composted and watching them disappear in my potato patch.
Currently I have been reusing all of my notes and stacks of research paper I printed off at university to turn into home-made recycled paper.
Even to this day I keep receipts, the cardboard of tissue boxes, and loose paper that comes my way.
Recently my mom grew pretty annoyed with my cluttered paper collection so she bought me a paper shredder.
At first I thought that maybe maybe as the years went by I became less conscious. Maybe I became a bit more naive. Or maybe I was just a little late in the game in my twenties to realize that there are facilities that actually recycle my Nutella jars.
There is so much that our local bottle depot can not recycle and its not anyone’s fault for only knowing what you know based on where you grew up and the resources available.
I think it would be fantastic if we were able to recycle more materials and send that to a facility where the District of Houston would see that money come back in revenue for the town.
This would also help educate all residents on how to properly recycle, and be more environmentally conscious.
People from Houston no longer need be embarrassed or ignorant in recycling their Nutella ever again.