London has a big blue box problem. People aren’t paying attention to what can and can’t be recycled and it’s costing our city $250,000 a year to mess with the mess they make.
I’ve committed the rules to memory. They change every once in a while. Last year London added a whole bunch of new items to the recyclable list. But really, it’s not that difficult. Papers go in one blue box, containers go in another. Wood is not a paper or a container. Neither is styrofoam. It’s taking way too much time and too many tax dollars for workers to pick through the rubble of the blue boxes and sort the things the way they should have been in the first place.
Bless hubby’s heart, he’s not one of those who learns the rules. I’ve picked out frozen food packaging, paper coffee cups and all sorts of stuff our city doesn’t recycle. I used to take a second blue box to the curb and put the paper products into it when he wasn’t looking. But now that the city has launched a campaign to teach everybody how it should be done, he says it has sunk in. At least we aren’t putting construction materials out like our neighbours. Or putting out nothing like our other neighbours. We can debate the value of recycling until the cows come home but if we’re going to bother, let’s at least bother to do it right.