Voyageur Recycles Every Day!

     It’s America Recycles Day and Voyageur  should be celebrating.  Instead I’m patting myself on the back and telling myself what a good job I have done recycling.  To the annoyance of almost everyone who works at Voyageur I’m a real stickler when it comes to recycling not just on America Recycles Day but every day.

     I must confess I am a dumpster diver.  We have a dumpster and if you ever see a set of legs sticking out of it then they are probably mine.  Any time I see a plastic bottle, magazine, piece of cardboard bigger than a toilet paper roll or an item I think I can recycle somewhere or come up with a use for I go dumpster diving.  I get my clothes dirty, my hands dirty and the satisfaction of knowing I prevented something from ending up in the landfill.

     I also pick through our garbage cans and bags of garbage the neighbors bring over.  If I’m relatively certain there aren’t items in the bag that could have been recycled then I leave it be if not then I tear into the bag and sometimes the person who brought it over.  I know who drinks what kind of beverage, smokes what type of cigarettes and can usually determine whose bag it is by the junk mail in it.  

     I even have the habit of jumping into the recycling trailer kept at our place.  The plastic compartments fill up way faster than the glass, aluminum or tin especially when people don’t smash their plastic containers to get the air out of them.  In order to make more room for our recycleables I’ll grab a big piece of flattened out cardboard and start jumping on top of the plastics to get them to compress.  Of course if I’m in there and see a lid from a milk container that gives 5 cents to the school then I pull those off  too.  

     Mike often complains about the amount of time I spend recycling.  I’m happy to say I can’t help it.  On America Recycles Day and every day I’m recycling as much as I can.