Less than 20 percent

In a recent blog post from the Austin American-Statesman, journalist Andrea Lorenz reports that less than 20 percent of the residents in Round Rock, Texas currently participate in the city’s curbside recycling program. Wow. Even with the amazing amount of attention “green” is getting these days, we have yet to hit a tipping point in a majority of communities when it comes to one of the most basic green things to do – recycling. This report is a follow-up from an earlier article on the state of recycling in Williamson County (the county in Texas in which we live). I’m glad to see this issue is being recognized and discussed, which is progress in my book. We have a long way to go. In the meantime, take an active role in your community to identify gaps and opportunities to bring some verde living to your neighborhood. Your voice is important in this quest to be a little greener.

Four Easy Ways to Reduce Your Trash

The concept of recycling is still a novel idea for many. It’s probably the easiest step to take to reduce the amount of waste sent to local landfills. In our community, trash is picked up twice a week. It means that over 100 times a year a garbage truck (which probably doesn’t get the greatest gas mileage) swings by our house to pick up our trash. Nice convenience or just a huge waste (pardon the pun)?

We are currently placing our trash curbside on average once a week through some minor changes we’ve made with a goal to only have to put out trash once every two weeks. If you are trying to reduce your trash each week, here are steps we’ve taken to do so for the average week:

1. Curbside recycling. Our curbside service takes aluminum, tin, paper, and most types of plastic.

2. Recycle everything else you can. We currently take our glass and a few other items to a local recycling center.

3. Paperboard, you’re next. All of those cereal boxes and pretty much anything else on the “inside” aisles at the grocery store are recyclable. It’s just that most curbside services don’t take them. We have some room for improvement on this one.

4. Compost! All vegetable and fruit waste now makes its way to our homemade compost bin (that’s a future post). We eat our fair share of fruits and veggies, so those rinds, peels, and anything else now go back into our yard…eventually.

If you have handy, simple tips on how you’ve reduced your trash output, please comment!