Reduce, reuse, recycle.

So, a new house means the opportunity for new regimes, which can be scary but in this case it’s rather exciting! I have been told that up until fairly recently (say, last 5 or so years) recycling programmes haven’t been that big or popular. Because of this, none of my housemates recycle, really, which results in several things: embarrassingly empty recycling bins come collection day; really full (really fast) garbage bins; and huge amounts of waste on garbage day (multiple black bags). I tried to get my housemates from ManHouse to recycle but it was not easy and usually ended up with me nagging people, which makes for an unhappy and unpopular Kat. However, here in AppHouse there are only 4 of us, a much more manageable number of people with a much more agreeable group demeanour.

So, I have convinced my housemates to recycle. In our neighbourhood, the city collects cans, plastic, paper and card, and glass; so, pretty much everything, which is awesome. They only collect every other week so some of the more popular bins fill up quickly (like cans), but we’ve been coping. Plus, we’re discussing buying a can crusher. Cans and plastic get sorted together and our bin was overflowing last week, so I got Ashley to crush all the cans by stomping on them to make more room. If you ever have someone who is not fully willing or enthusiastic to recycle just get them to stomp on cans; the attitude adjustment that follows is 180 degrees. Every other Monday night is Ashley’s new favourite time of…the (every other) week.

I recently suggested to the house that we implement a new goal of only producing one bin bag of garbage per week. This did not go over so well. I tried to reason with them that there are only 4 of us (or that’s soon to be the case) so we should be able to do it, if not easily, with minimal effort. One particular housemate thought this was insane and perhaps even inhumane to ask such a thing of  a person; to this housemate I suggested ways in which he could reduce his consumption of materials that might end up in the bin, therefore lowering our trash output. He listened, if perhaps hesitantly. I reasoned with said housemate that we are recycle all our paper, cardboard, plastic, and cans that will dramatically reduce what goes in the bin. Then I asked, Besides leftover food waste, what are you throwing out? To this, my housemate could not come up with an answer. Luckily for my argument this was convincing enough to change my housemate’s perspective. We are all now on the one bag band wagon. Throughout the week both Dan and Ashley have separately told me how they’ve started a recyclables bag in their bedrooms. I am very proud.

Hmm, reusing. This one we haven’t really conquered yet. We keep all our shopping bags and try to reuse them, but it’s a habit that takes some time to ingrain to the brain. I’ve got some reusable shopping bags in my purse all the time, but the boys don’t carry purses so they often find themselves at the shop empty handed and come home with more plastic bags. But we’re working on it. Plus our local grocery store has a bag recycling point, which we will probably take advantage often. Despite not having a check in the reuse box, I did demonstrate to my housemates some of the things we can do with empty food containers: