After you toss your food waste or recyclables in trash, have you thought about where they end up? I was always confident whatever I put in my recycle bins actually got recycled, but when I found out less than 10% of what goes in your bin gets recycled, I was astonished and wondered why? Doesn't every item that has a recycle sign get recycled? After some research, I found out that the recycle sign does not necessarily mean that the item is recyclable. For example, if the recyclable items are dirty or if there is broken glass in the recyclable bin, everything in that bin adds up to the waste in the land field. 

Before 2018, our trash was being sent to China to get washed, sorted and recycled. Now it is our responsibility to take care of our own trash and recycles and if we don't, our waste landfills will be getting so big that we will all be living near one. If you have noticed, some cities have already stopped recycling, which is heart breaking.

We do not hear about our trash problem on the news, but it is a huge problem and we can not just wait on a government or private agency to fix it. We need to find our own solutions and implement those solutions in our community. We need to take a second look at anything we are throwing away to see:

1. Can this item be reused?

2. Can this item be upcyled?

3. Does your recycle bin contain only clean items? 

4. If there is no recycling bin given to you by the city, sort out your recyclables and take them to appropriate recycling center or form a community recycling group. 

In the city where I live, we do have three collection bins, one for general trash, one for recycle and one for food & gardening waste. Where CT Organics is located, we only have one bin for everything, but I do have a TerraCycle bin for personal care empty container waste.

If you are willing to drive to San Juan Capistrano you can drop off your personal care products in our Zero Waste TerraCycle bin for free. You can also bring in your clean face wash, liquid wash, face mask bottles and jars that you purchased from us to get a refill. We will re-sanitize them for you before it is refilled. 

This all seems like a lot of work and responsibility on the consumer side, but if we don't initiate some sort of way of learning to recycle and up-cycle, our soil and water will continue to become more contaminated. Read about recycling 101 here.

In order to recycle efficiently, we need better sorting systems in our household and cities to make sure every piece of trash is getting to the correct recycling center and of course we need MANY more recycling centers. Maybe each Starbucks or Target can have huge recycling bins that get collected every night, just a thought!!!!! I also think it is very important to open our kids eyes to how our trash is really our problem and think twice before over buying.

If you have cardboard boxes you need to donate or sell check out https://www.boxcycle.com