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Showing posts from April, 2019
"Saving the world, one person at a time."

Taking Out My Neighbor's Recycling

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 On Earth Day, I took my trash out.  It had been awhile since this had to be done because we've been so conscious about everything we toss in the trash.  Our community dumpster was oooooooverflowing.  There were trash bags stacked on the side of the dumpster.  I looked at the dumpster and there were two very large cardboard boxes sitting in it.  I had recently gone to an Eco-cycle event, teaching us how to talk to people door-to-door.  During that event, someone spoke out about how they had offered to their neighbors to use their compost bin.  In that moment, looking at those cardboard boxes, I had an idea.  This was a regular occurrence, recyclable items in our dumpster.  I can understand why.  Our HOA doesn't provide recycling.  We take ours to the recycling center on the military base next door.  However, not everyone living in my community is military or veterans (who have access).  My idea was simple.  I would put a sign up telling my neighbors to drop off their

Pay-As-You-Throw

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I'm back from my vacation to Washington state!  I have loads to share as well.  I'm not going to lie it was hard to transition back to not only being vegan but also being environmentally responsible. Before I left,  I attended one of Eco-Cycle's many events.  This one in particular was about PAYT, Pay-as-you-throw.  Basically, instead of paying for recycling and compost, you would pay for your trash.  The cool thing is, you pay for how much trash.  I'll elaborate later now about what that means.  So at the moment, Denver residents only recycle/compost 22% of their waste.  It's supposed to be possible to get that number to 75% (50% compost, 25% recycling)  Many other cities already have PAYT implemented.  Here are the cities that are leading as examples with their recycling/compost waste rate: 1. Fresno, CA  71% 2. Seattle, WA  64% 3. Austin, TX  42% 4. Salt Lake City, UT  38% Denver wishes to become 34% by 2020. These are the rates that Loveland, CO is