I live in Portland, OR, a city known for some efforts toward sustainable living. For example, one is allowed to keep up to three hens without a permit here -- and more, if you get a permit from the County. Why hens? They eat kitchen scraps, keeping them out of the garbage. They eat pests. And their droppings are very fertilizing. Got dandelions in your yard? Turn them into delicious eggs by feeding them to your hens!
Our chicken coop
Portland also rearranged garbage collection. Now, every week we put yard debris (leaves, clippings, twigs, etc.), kitchen scraps (what doesn't go to the hens) and certain paper products like paper towels into the green colored bin. The City turns all this green stuff into mulch which you can then buy for your garden. We also have a blue bin for cans, cardboard, scrap paper and the like. Glass goes into a smaller yellow bin. Finally, all other household trash goes into a gray bin which is only collected every other week. That's right -- recyclables get picked up every week. The stuff for the landfill only every two weeks.
Here is the City of Portland's web page on recycling. You can see that the goal for 2015 is to raise recycling to 75% of garbage collection. Not bad!
So much for prosaic practicality. Now, for a view of recycling taken to high art. Check out the Wat Pa Maha Cedi Kaew temple in Thailand, near the Cambodian border.
Wat Pa Mah Chedi Kaew, image found on Yahoo.<-- Click for more images!
This is what a bunch of very patient Buddhist monks, motivated by disgust for litter, can do with over a million recycled beer bottles collected from the surrounding community. Sublime, isn't it? They even made mosaics out of bottle caps!
What sort of recycling happens in your home and community?
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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