An Annoyance

So because we live in a mobile home park the yard waste and recycling are a little different. For yard waste there is one big bin for about every 3 or 4 homes and they all have to stay in a central area, which means that we have to walk a block to pick up the yard waste bin, use it and return it the same day. You can imagine how annoying this is when I have to do it with Emma in a sling, and Michael riding his big wheel in the street, because there are no sidewalks, while I pull a half full yard waste bin a block and then weed or mow the lawn only to repeat the process pulling a full and heavy yard waste bin back. Needless to say I don’t do yard work often mostly because of the inconvenience of trying to coordinate everything between naps, lunch, and all.

However, that is not the reason for my blog post. I am actually more annoyed about our recycling situation. Everyone else in our city has big recycling bins like this


but we get three small open top recycle bins like this.


The problem is that it gets really windy here being near the mountains and if you put paper, etc. into the bins by morning it will be spread all around the neighborhood. I have asked management about getting the larger bins like the rest of the city, to be told that if we get the larger bins the city will require us to have central locations and not pick up house to house. Which would mean pulling a large bin to your house to place recycling in and then hauling it back. I’ve already talked about how annoying that is. And our manager knows that less people will recycle if that is the case.


Solution, I have noticed that some neighbors have just bought their own trash can, written recycling on it and fill it with their recycling and put it out. So I used one of our old trash cans and taped paper to it that said recycling and have been putting it out with our trash on our recycling days. Good solution right?

Well, no. One day I was looking out the window when the garbage truck came and realized that they threw the recycling out in the garbage truck with our other trash. Now technically if we put two trash cans out we are required to place a sticker on it that shows that we paid the extra fee to put out an extra trash can. I thought it was a fluke and forgot about it, until 2 months later I noticed the exact same thing happen! I got mad, I was going to all this work to help the environment and recycle, and what was happening? They were throwing it away as trash anyways!

I called the city telling them my problem asking for them to give us the big recycling bins. I was told no, because the truck was built to pick up the big bins without the use of people and they would only do that at the central locations like the yard waste. And since our management did not want to do that, they would only give us the little bins so that they would not be too heavy to lift by their workers. It all makes sense somewhat, yet I don’t see why the truck can’t go down the street and pick up the large bins, just like they do everywhere else in the city. As for throwing the recycling away as trash, I was told that they shouldn't be doing it. Yes, I know that! So the best I could come up with, larger signs with the recycling logo and one sign telling them NOT TO THROW IT AWAY AS TRASH. I will have to watch this Friday and see if it works or not. But needless to say I am annoyed about the whole thing.