Recycle Bin Quotes

Memory is a funny thing. It tricks you into believing that you've forgotten important moments, and then when you're raking your brain for a bit of information that might make sense of something else, it taps you on the head and says, "Remember when you told me to put that memory in the green rubbish bin? Well, I didn't, I put it in the black recycling tub, and it's coming your way again.

These are the attributes of Bullshit people; they will...blur your imagination, take your endowments for a piece of debris, make you ridiculous, and most importantly, you got to send them to the recycle bin.

كلمة "آسف" دي بتعمل Delete للمشكلة لكن ده ما يمنعش انها بتفضل في Recycle bin

I think I'll throw her in the garbage!" Caleb announces and heads for the kitchen. "No, put her in the recycle bin," Josie giggles. "You can't recycle mommies!" I call out and gently hit Caleb's back with my fists.

A field trip. You interested in doing something dangerous, and possibly illegal?" Does it involve underage girls, broken curfews and soorte4d fruit toppings?" I dropped the empty can into the recycling bin and leaned against the kitchen peninsula, grinning like an idiot. "Two of the three. And I could probably scrounge up some strawberry jam, if you're desperate." "I'm never desperate," Tod said, only his voice hadn't come from my phone. I whirled around to see the reaper standing behind me, still holding his cell. "But for the record, I prefer apricot." "Yuck. Nobody likes apricot jam.

Thousands of years ago, after the big Titan-God war, the gods had sliced him into bits with his own scythe and scattered his remains in Tartarus, which is like the gods’ bottomless recycling bin for their enemies.

Dirty mugs crowded a side table, the recycling bin was overflowing, and stacks of letters stood unopened. It all told a tale of grief and distraction.

Together we made our way from the service entrances in back to the front, Jenks shedding clothes and handing them to me to stuff in my bag every few yards. It was terribly distracting, but I managed to avoid running into the Dumpsters and recycling bins.

As far as quality housemates to be found on Planet Earth, it goes: dolphins, elephants, orangutans, octopi, then every single spider, then Joan of Arc, the Dalai Lama, Mr. Rogers, Freddie Mercury, my nan, all the scorpions, German measles, a dented recycling bin, and then maybe some of the rest of us.

Snow... blots and softens the top of every object like ice on a plum pudding. Hedges, telegraph wires, cars, postboxes, recycling bins. The world is losing its edges. Look upwards and it seems as if the stars themselves are being poured from the sky and turn out not to be vast and fiery globes after all but tiny, frozen things which melt in the palm of your hand.

In life we meet many people. some people remain in touch and some contacts are dumped in recycle bin of mind. we expect somethings from people in our life but sometimes those expectations remain unnoticed and incomplete. getting depressed in such condition is natural but if we try we can minimize this amount off hearty hurt.

It started as a selfish act and has turned into a way of life. I can't stand to watch someone throw anything away that belongs in my green bin.

So you can be 'fantastic' or 'elastic' but can you ever be both lol??

That’s how love dies, buried among recycle bin duty, folding lingerie, dishwasher cycles, and grocery shopping. PTA meetings, play dates, double shifts in the ER, taking a screaming kid to the dentist,

Recycling is better--I won't write "good"--for the environment. But without economics--without supply and demand of raw materials--recycling is nothing more than a meaningless exercise in glorifying garbage. No doubt it's better than throwing something into an incinerator, and worse than fixing something that can be refurbished. It's what you do if you can't bear to see something landfilled. Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn't mean you've recycled anything, and it doesn't make you a better, greener person: it just means you've outsourced your problem. Sometimes that outsourcing is near home; and sometimes it's overseas. But wherever it goes, the global market and demand for raw materials is the ultimate arbiter. Fortunately, if that realization leaves you feeling bad, there's always the alternative: stop buying so much crap in the first place. (269)

If this had been a public-school locker room, there would have been some gray jumbo-sized garbage cans nearby, and I probably could've taken care of cleanup by myself. But apparently the girls of St. Andrew's don't throw anything away, because all they had was a tiny wastebasket and some recycling bins. There were bins for paper, plastic, and glass, but none for rotting corpses. Go figure.

For a hoarder, staying clean isn't really about bins and labels; it's about processing items that come into the house. A good organizer can help a hoarder develop methods for sorting mail, for staying on top of recycling, and for making sure donated items get to their destinations... The repetition of bad cleaning skills is usually what got the hoarder into trouble in the first place, so an organizer works on repetition of new, positive cleaning skills.

where the desks looked as they normally did – Reggie’s neat and tidy, Ox’s like a vacuum cleaner and a recycling bin had fought to the death over a takeaway order.

Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn’t mean you’ve recycled anything, and it doesn’t make you a better, greener person: it just means you’ve outsourced your problem. Sometimes that outsourcing is near home; and sometimes it’s overseas. But wherever it goes, the global market and demand for raw materials is the ultimate arbiter. Fortunately, if that realization leaves you feeling bad, there’s always the alternative: stop buying so much crap in the first place.

I collect the words unheard. I pluck them from the air, rescue them from gutters, retrieve them from branches—they don’t vibrate for long after the words are spoken. I often wonder if I weren’t deaf whether I’d hear them. I gather them on my morning walk, along with bottles and cans from recycling bins, and again after supper at St. Joseph’s soup kitchen.

One of the reasons that the area would never be renovated, however, was the council’s insistence that each house had three large plastic trash-bins on wheels, each a bright color: green for the bottles left over from last night’s drunken orgy, red for stolen goods now surplus to requirements, purple for dead bodies and used syringes, all in fact that a modern British urban household needs to disembarrass itself of.

There is comfort in such accumulations, layers of lives, of years. Gardening tools, wheelbarrow, arousal cans, old bicycles, recycling bins, battered trash cans, cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, cracked clay pots, exiled kitchenware & furniture, antique television, dog food bowls. You could do an inventory of a household by all that has been worn out or excluded, exiled from it. You could do an inventory of a life.

You know there are no rules,” and Reggie said, “Really?” because she could think of a lot of rules, like cutting grapes in half and wearing a cap when you went swimming, not to mention separating all the rubbish for the recycling bins. Unlike with Ms. MacDonald, recycling was something that Dr. Hunter was very keen on. She said, “No, not those kinds of things, I mean the way we live our lives. There isn’t a template, a pattern that we’re supposed to follow. There’s no one watching us to see if we’re doing it properly, there is no properly, we just make it up as we go along.

Walking to the door, I stare into Johnny Depp’s eyes and my gut sinks. “I’m sorry. You’ve been a good imaginary boyfriend, but I’m a grown-up now. There’s no room in my life for a boyfriend. Not even an imaginary one.” But he just stares at me. “Don’t look at me like that.” But he does. He’s torturing me. I sigh tiredly and rub at my forehead. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Please, Johnny. It’s over.” I’m getting a headache. I take my time pulling him down with the utmost care, rolling him up and putting a rubber band around him. I hold him in my hands and walk him over to the recycling bin. I lift the lid and put him in. I slowly close the lid and turn around.

Are you a drinker?' the doctor asked. I heard the clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk of empty wine bottles hitting the bottom of my recycling bin. 'Um, I suppose I would say that.

sneaking into our room when we were out, to go through our bins before we emptied them. She’d leave the evidence next to my pillow, with little Post-it notes saying, “Hi! Just popped in to check on something, and found these in your bin. Don’t forget to recycle!” It wasn’t a horse’s head, but it was pretty fucking close.

So I lean over carefully, and there, piled a foot high against the sides of the metal bin, are beat-up U.S. quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. Next to the filling bin is another bin, a full bin of coins that fell from the pockets of Americans who had more pressing matters than loose change. According to Jack, an average junked U.S. automobile contains $1.65 in loose change when it’s shredded. If that’s right—and from what I see, I believe that it must be—then the 14 million cars scrapped in good years (good for automobile recyclers, at least) in the United States contain within them more than $20 million in cash just waiting to be recovered. Understandably, Huron Valley isn’t interested in revealing just how much money they recover from U.S. automobiles (they have a deal whereby they return the currency to the U.S. Treasury for a percentage of the original value), but David is willing to note that the coin recovery system has “paid for itself.” It occurs to me that Huron Valley has happened upon the most brilliant of businesses: one whose product is money itself! That is, rather than make something that needs to be marketed for money, Huron Valley just makes money.

My ride’s here.” “Temporary ride.” Blue exploded, hurling her yogurt container into the recycling bin. “What is it, Orla? Jealousy? Or what? You just don’t want me to like them as well as I do because … you’re trying to save me from being hurt? You know what else is temporary? Life.

That was what was interesting about Los Angeles: its great glory and its gritty underbelly were often walking distance apart. I think the city planners created it that way on purpose. Los Angeles is a recycle bin for dreamers, and the dream needs to be always visible but just slightly out of grasp.

On one of the evenings, apropos of nothing ('apropos' was another new word), when Dr Hunter and Reggie were giving the baby a bath, Dr Hunter turned to Reggie and said, 'You now there are no rules,' and Reggie said, 'Really?' because she could think of a lot of rules, like cutting grapes in half and wearing a cap when you went swimming, not to mention separating all the rubbish for the recycling bins. Unlike Ms MacDonald, recycling was something that Dr Hunter was very keen on. She said, 'No, not those kinds of things, I mean the way we live our lives. There isn't a template, a pattern that we're supposed to follow. There's no one watching us to see if we're doing it properly, there is no properly, we just make it up as we go along.

hatch our survival plan in the coolest place we could find. We made our way into the cluttered room at the windowed front of the deckhouse—what our boat builders back in Hong Kong called the “lavish grand salon” in their sales brochures. With us, it was more like the messy rumpus room. True, the room had, as advertised, “a curved couch, sleek teak paneling, and hardwood cabinetry with a built-in sink.” But the sink had dirty dishes and empty soda bottles in it, the paneled walls were cluttered with a collection of my parents’ favorite treasures (including a conquistador helmet, a rare African tribal mask, a grog jug shaped like a frog, a rusty cannonball from a Confederate gunboat, a bronze clock covered with cherubs that probably belonged to King Louis XIV, and, in a glass shadow box, a rusty steak knife from the Titanic). There were assorted trinkets, necklaces, and coconut heads suspended from the ceiling. Add a heap of scuba and snorkel gear and assorted socks, shoes, and T-shirts on the floor (the floor is our laundry basket), and our grand salon looked more like a live-in recycling bin. “Have we even seen a map for this treasure hunt?” asked Beck. “Nope. Dad just said we needed to be in the Caymans.” “Then we need to find his map.

These friends of mine recently went to Canada to get married,” she replies. “They’re two women, and I came home to wrap up their gift and found a copy of the local Catholic newspaper with a headline about gay marriage being a moral failing.” She shakes her head. “I just set it in the recycling bin and thought, Well, you’re dead wrong, and prayed for change. Then I mailed the gift.

storage bedroom closet (walk-in or standard) dresser armoire underbed storage boxes trunk or storage ottoman nightstand supplies needed trash bags/recycling bin, donation box, relocation box, fix-it box spray cleaner and cleaning cloth broom and dust pan and/or vacuum storage containers label maker and/or tags to hang from containers/baskets time commitment 4–10 hours quick assessment questions What are the main categories of clothing? What items could be placed in off-season storage? What

This project may be preceeded or followed by the clothing organization steps found in the next section of this book. ORGANIZE CLOTHING examples of storage bedroom closet (walk-in or standard) dresser armoire underbed storage boxes trunk or storage ottoman nightstand supplies needed trash bags/recycling bin, donation box, relocation box, fix-it box spray cleaner and cleaning cloth broom and dust pan and/or vacuum storage containers label maker and/or tags to hang from containers/baskets time commitment 4–10 hours quick assessment questions What are the main categories of clothing? What items could be placed in off-season storage? What types of things need quick and instant access? potential goals for this space make getting ready in the morning a snap make it easier to put away clothing in the evening and on laundry day get rid of clothing that no longer fits create a new wardrobe make the closet visually appealing quick-toss list any clothing that is stained or ripped shoes that are past their prime clothing left over from the high school years (unless, of course, you’re still in high school) souvenir t-shirts broken jewelry socks without mates underwear that has lost its elasticity dry-cleaner hangers and plastic bags storage containers bins/boxes/baskets that are open-top bins/boxes/baskets with lids

And so they did. Over the next several weeks, the garden friends collected trash that they found lying around—from soda cans that had tumbled out of the recycling bin, to a weather-beaten cardboard box, to an old baseball cap that was the perfect size for a mosquito-sized soda fountain. The friends used this junk to construct tiny buildings. They decorated their new business with colorful leaves and flower petals, and they used rocks and pebbles for tables and chairs. Wiggly worked hard at making tunnels in the dirt for his new park, and even Snarky caught on to the enthusiasm and collected shiny pebbles for his shop. By the time they were finished, Garden Town had come to be—a tiny town with a soda fountain, a park, a restaurant, and a pebble shop. Wiggly Worm and his friends had proved that, with a little hard work and determination, it’s possible to make your dreams come true! Just for Fun Activity Collect old containers and other trash-bound items in your house. With a little imagination (and some craft supplies), I bet you can make a pretty cool Garden Town of your own! Glue the town to a piece of poster

Litter by Maisie Aletha Smikle You want me not Am inedible left to rot Am unusable to you And treasure to someone new Am litter Don't use me for batter Or to make fried fritter Am just matter that doesn’t matter Rejected unwanted misplaced I have a place It's no disgrace However where am placed is a disgrace On the beach in the market or on the street Where you meet to play shop and eat I should be out of sight In a bin anchored tight Or some where Where I can rest in piece And not be tossed about from place to place Littering everywhere like heaps of fallen snow I can be recycled too And use to make things brand new Bury burn or reuse just choose Don't misuse or abuse And dump me where I don't belong Left for the winds and rain to take me along Wherever it goes Like am your foe Treat Earth kindly Place me in a bin where I belong Even litter has a place It's no disgrace

The thought of deleting things permanently from life is painful. Moving them into recycle bin is easy. Take a break from things for 28 days and see if you want them back or not.

I made a tea and drank it looking out at the empty street. Well, empty except for two rats going through a capsized recycling bin across the way. Until a seagull bullied them away and started ripping into a black bag. The Bristolian equivalent of watching the deer emerge and sip morning dew. I

Try my favourite approach to avoiding small talk. Enter the date in media res. That’s Latin for “in the middle of things.” It’s a literary term that describes a story opening somewhere in the middle of the action, rather than at the beginning. (You can think of it as “coming in hot.”) When you walk into a date, instead of starting with the awkward “So, how’s your day going?” or “Where do you live?” jump right into the middle of things: “You’ll never guess what happened on my way over here!” or “I just got off the phone with my sister and she told me about this battles she’s in with her landlord over the recycling bins.” By skipping the getting-to-know you small talk and diving straight into the type of conversation that friends (or lovers!) might have, you take a shortcut to intimacy. Of course the conversation may reverse—you’ll eventually cover how your day is going, where you live, and so on, but at least you will have dipped your toes into the waters of real conversation.

A post-movie dance: [You walk out of the theatre. You stretch. You toss your popcorn in the trash bin and wonder if it’s recycling. You pretend to be a slow walker on your way to the exit so you don’t appear too close to the stranger in front of you. You walk to the bathroom. You wait in line. You piss. You hold your fart. You come out. You walk to the parking garage. You walk back to the theatre because you forgot to validate your ticket. You come back to your car. You leave the garage. You get a phone call from mom and talk to her. Then you turn on the radio in traffic. Then you come home and respond to e-mails and go back to sleep. And soon, a movie has died.]

Before he drove away, he used a packet of wipes to clean his hands. Carefully. Almost lovingly. Like he hadn’t just used them to wrap a dirty extension cord around my neck by my recycle bins in my side yard until I finally stopped fighting.  In hindsight, that was when I decided I was going to haunt him.  I

Here are some simple household applications for baking soda; don’t be surprised when I mention it throughout the book! Carpets: Sprinkle on carpets and let sit for 30 minutes to absorb odors and lift out dirt, then vacuum it up. Trash cans/recycling bins: Sprinkle some in the can or bin if it smells, leave for 20 minutes, then wipe clean with a wet cloth. Kitchen: For caked-on food on pots, pans, the oven door, or cooktop, create a paste of equal parts dish soap and baking soda, then add a few sprinkles of water until it’s got a nice, pudding-like consistency. Apply with a damp, soft sponge and let sit on the surface for about 20 minutes, then wipe off (easily!) with a wet sponge. Rinse well and buff dry with a cloth. Walls: Sprinkle a little on a cloth slightly dampened with water, and use it to erase marks on the wall (yep, an eraser-style sponge substitute). Wipe the wall clean with a dry cloth. Sinks: Works great to remove stains from sinks—sprinkle it in and scrub well with a soapy sponge and hot water. Buff with a dry cloth to achieve that high-polish shine. The results are amazing!

She never came back after mid-term break; according to the Automator, ‘unforeseen circumstances’ had forced her to extend her holiday. Every day Howard sees her classes trooping despondently from the Geography Room to the study hall, or carrying votive bundles of cardboard and paper to the recycling bins, their faces anxious, hopeful, like Indians doing a rain dance. He knows how they feel. Since mid-term he’s existed in a constant state of tension, braced against every moment as the one that might finally restore her. Even out of school, even on his own, shopping in the supermarket, sitting at the traffic lights, he finds himself holding his breath. But the days are a series of ghost pregnancies, delivering nothing.

Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn’t mean you’ve recycled anything, and it doesn’t make you a better, greener person: it just means you’ve outsourced your problem.

First, as shown in Table 2.1, the amount of time when value is actually being created (3 hours) is infinitesimal in relation to the total time (319 days) from bauxite to recycling bin. More than 99 percent of the time the value stream is not flowing at all: the muda of waiting. Second, the can and the aluminum going into it are picked up and put down thirty times. From the customer’s standpoint none of this adds any value: the muda of transport. Similarly, the aluminum and cans are moved through fourteen storage lots and warehouses, many of them vast, and the cans are palletized and unpalletized four times: the muda of inventories and excess processing. Finally, fully 24 percent of the energy-intensive, expensive aluminum coming out of the smelter never makes it to the customer: the muda of defects (causing scrap).

The Battenberg might be mundane, but the connection to my impending emotional turmoil saved it from the memory recycle bin.

We quickly forget the mundane moments in our lives, but those that trigger strong emotions always live on. The Battenberg might be mundane, but the connection to my impending emotional turmoil saved it from the memory recycle bin.

Here’s how I go through my mail using the “touch it once” principal: o         I walk out to the mailbox and grab the mail. o         As I walk back up my driveway I’m picking out all the junk mail. o         I toss the junk mail into the recycle bin in my garage, before I even walk back into the house. o         I easily pick out the magazines and put them in my magazines-to-be-read stack on the coffee table. o         I take the remaining bills—that’s all there is left, nobody sends letters anymore—and set them on my bills-to-be-paid-pile next to my computer. o         Because I’ve time blocked bill paying every Sunday night I don’t even bother opening those envelopes until that time.

Thousands of years ago, after the big Titan—God war, the gods had sliced him to bits with his own scythe and scattered his remains in Tartarus, which is like the gods’ bottomless recycling bin for their enemies.

Understanding, I believe, is a unifying force and unity is just what is unlikely to happen in a culture where people can live next to someone who fundamentally disagrees with them about life’s most important questions. Empathy says, “Okay, I don’t get understand you, but I don’t have to and I don’t have to win the argument. And don’t worry about the recycling bins while you’re out of town; I’ll take care of them.

If only you would apply yourself.” My teachers in high school told me that so often that they decided to really drill it in by writing it in my yearbook, over and over. I was a bad student. Still am. Busywork was the bane of my existence—those little homework assignments that felt like a waste of time, that required organizational skills like Writing Down Your Assignment and Not Losing Your Handout. These were difficult tasks for me. My locker was a pile of loose papers that got more and more crinkly as the weeks went on until it looked like the inside of a recycling bin. I discovered that if you ignore something long enough, it really does go away. Literally. The papers would disintegrate. I would pass just enough tests and do enough begging to eke by with a D. Sometimes.

Not all Republicans showed such restraint. One day, Pete Rouse wandered into the Oval to show me media clips containing various remarks from Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, founder of the House Tea Party Caucus and an eventual Republican candidate for president. Bachmann had been decrying newfangled energy-efficient lightbulbs as an un-American “Big Brother intrusion” and a threat to public health; they also signaled what she declared to be a larger plot by Democrats to impose a radical “sustainability” agenda, in which all U.S. citizens would eventually be forced to “move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take light rail to their government jobs.” “Looks like our secret is out, Mr. President,” Pete said. I nodded gravely. “Better hide the recycling bins.

Create a wonderful Christmas or winter centerpiece using this wine bottle craft! You'll turn something destined for the recycling bin into a gorgeous and dramatic centerpiece, perfect for holiday parties.

His name was Ed. His nickname was Scrambled Ed. On leaving school he had taken a year out to decide what he wanted to study at University. The year passed and he still hadn't decided but went to University anyway. 'Academic' is defined as 'of, or relating to, institutionalized education and scholarship'. The same word, at the same time, also means 'having little practical use or value, as by being overly detailed, unengaging or theoretical'. The latter definition seemed the most appropriate for Ed's university career which was a mash up of drinking, diving, surfing, kayaking and having his heart-broken. All washed down with a few pints. After three years of that he was awarded a second class joint honours degree which he put in the recycling bin and went in search of something that would make him feel better.

Such perverse incentives for waste permeate the economy. Most sanitation systems charge homeowners the same rate for large amounts of trash rolled to the curb as they do for small amounts - one flat fee for all, whether your neighbor makes half the trash you do, or twice as much. But some communities use a "pay as you throw" model: make less waste to be hauled away, use a smaller size bin at the curb, and you pay less each month. Bigger trash bins receive bigger bills because there's more to haul - an eminently fair setup. With that model, an incentive to be wasteful is replaced by an incentive to be thrifty. Give each homeowner a recycling bin and make hauling its contents free regardless of the amount of recyclables inside, and another incentive is born: an economic incentive to sort trash properly (which a surprising number of people resist under the what's in it for me? objection to the minor inconvenience of sorting).

Tornadoes devastate and leave a mess behind, just like your ending, so the instant that 'Psychlone' sees you rebuilding, she's going to spin completely out of control, every time. You can't get sucked into the same vortex twice if you eject the monster from being it's own victim; but until then, I'd pull in your rocking chairs, lock down your trash cans and recycling bins, and take your potted azaleas inside... ... if I were you.

I am yesterday’s news abandoned in a heap, patiently waiting for the recyclers bin

The Recycle Bin can be a treacherous place for programs." He explained to the three as he walked briskly back down the hallway. "One wrong slip at the wrong time and it's virtually impossible to retrieve or restore you.

Back in 1990, the futurist George Gilder demonstrated his prescience when he wrote in his book Microcosm, “The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.” Just over twenty years later, in 2011, the venture capitalist (and Netscape cofounder) Marc Andreessen validated Gilder’s thesis in his Wall Street Journal op-ed “Why Software Is Eating the World.” Andreessen pointed out that the world’s largest bookstore (Amazon), video provider (Netflix), recruiter (LinkedIn), and music companies (Apple/ Spotify/ Pandora) were software companies, and that even “old economy” stalwarts like Walmart and FedEx used software (rather than “things”) to drive their businesses. Despite—or perhaps because of—the growing dominance of bits, the power of software has also made it easier to scale up atom-based businesses as well. Amazon’s retail business is heavily based in atoms—just think of all those Amazon shipping boxes piled up in your recycling bin! Amazon originally outsourced its logistics to Ingram Book Company, but its heavy investment in inventory management systems and warehouses as it grew turned infrastructure

Caution! Reading this book may be hazardous to your entire belief system. It will cause you to question every belief that you hold, have ever held and will ever hold. Everything that you believe to be true about yourself and about the universe, past, present and future, will be turned inside out and upside down, fed to the shredder and then dumped into the recycling bin.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 97 percent of postconsumer textile waste is recyclable. Yet only 20 percent gets recycled because the consumer simply does not know it can be. When I was a child, I remember watching a wooden mill turn old bed linens into beautiful paper sheets at the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, but I had forgotten about the class field trip until today. Throughout the world, a small portion of worn-out textiles is currently being converted into rags for the construction, painting, and automobile industries; another percentage is shredded into flocking fibers for insulating, padding, upholstering, or soundproofing purposes. But the recyclers wish they could put their hands on all textile discards, including the extras that we simply throw away or hoard for the what-if. Resale giant Goodwill, along with mobile recycling bins, accept both natural and man-made fibers of any brand for recycling. Those items that have holes, rips, and stains beyond repair can be boxed, labeled “rags,” and donated to participating locations, where they are then dispatched to textile recyclers.

But the experiment made me ask questions and learn a lot about the process. When we broke a couple of drinking glasses, I had to figure out how best to dispose of them: landfill or recycling? My searches on the Internet did not unanimously answer my questions and leaned toward sending them to the landfill, but I wanted to know for sure. It took visiting two different recycling centers, contacting twenty-one people, and shipping pieces of broken glassware to my glass recycler (tracking him down was not easy) to find out that my drinking glasses were recyclable after all (crystal ones are not, because they melt at a different temperature than most glass). I am not suggesting that you too put your glass in the bin (please first check with your local jurisdiction), but that you realize how complicated the system is, and reflect on the fact that for recycling to be successful, finding answers should be easy.

Plastics: Most curbside recycling pickups do not accept plastic bags, plastic sleeves, or Tyvek envelopes. Proactively requesting your senders not to mail any is the best way to avoid them. However, when your request is ignored, you can set the materials aside for reuse or check the list of items accepted in plastic bag collection bins such as those offered at grocery stores, as many accept more than grocery bags. Alternatively, you can send Tyvek envelopes for recycling (see “Resources”). Such parcel stuffers as bubble wrap (no tape attached), packing peanuts, or Styrofoam (entire pads only) are accepted at participating UPS stores for reuse. Alternatively, you can call the Plastic Loose Fill Council’s Peanut Hotline (1-800-828-2214) for the names of local businesses that also accept them for reuse.

Joy sat idly by the feet of a giant blond man who had beaten seven others in an ugly bar fight. He’d pushed himself drunkenly out a small bathroom window, landed in the glass-strewn alleyway and collapsed atop a pile of flattened cardboard boxes by a recycling bin. Now that the guy was unconscious, Ink could begin his work. Joy munched on a handful of peanuts and handed him instruments in a steady stream. “Seven by seven,” Ink said as he traced a small line of erupting black birds. “Reminds me of one of the old marks— the seventh son of a seventh son.” He exchanged the razor for the wand. “Not much call for that anymore.” “Why not?” Joy asked. “Birth control,” Ink answered and blew the leaf wand dry. 

SimpleHuman Recycle Bins – What Makes Them Better?