It was garbage day when Sam said, “I may not put the garbage out today; there’s only one bag.”
Sam was hankering to go fishing and didn’t want to fool with garbage. But the phenomenal thing was that there was only one bag for an entire week, even after hosting a couple of family members at the Prairie house.
After octogenarian Dickie Gossett taught us recycling it’s been amazing the reduction in our household garbage. Sam took a 1-by-4-inch board and attached it to the cedar siding outside the kitchen door. He hammered nails in like pegs to hold large garbage bags. I made labels: plastics, paper, cans.
Things really got going when Dickie pointed out all the things to go in the bags that I had not thought of, like junk mail, envelopes, cracker boxes, stomped gallon plastic jugs (the ones I don’t use as watering cans), disposable soap dispensers and so on. I learned any plastic item that has a triangle symbol is recyclable and goes into the plastics bag.
Most of the plastic tops are not recyclable, but those go to a collection at church where they are processed into things like playground equipment.
Before Sam went fishing, we were having breakfast on the back porch, watching the fall leaves, the fox squirrel tipping down to the lake, the deer from last year we called “Frick and Frack” frolicking, as we discussed recycling.
Sam said, “You know every bag we keep out of the landfill creates fewer landfills. Those landfills fill up after a while and they have to create more landfills. Also, it’s more efficient to make plastic from plastic than to make plastic from oil resources. It’s like Dickie said, ‘It just makes good sense.'”
I’ve found more than once I had to dig into the paper bag and get one of the sports pages because Sam or my brother, Skip, or nephew, Mark, wanted to read or re-read something about the Mississippi State football team and who thought what and when about the team. It’s been pretty nice not to have coffee grounds all over the sports page ’cause the grounds are recycled into the compost bucket.
While we were talking about recycling I thought of a good way to recycle old tires. You see, somebody goes up and down Old West Point Road throwing out used tires. Now if those tires could be ground up into a powder they’d be a real good thing to sprinkle over the asphalt the county uses to patch the pot holes, ’cause when you run over the pothole fresh asphalt sticks to your car.
Shirley, my walking partner (we can’t swim anymore due to the cold snap), said you could get asphalt off your car with peanut butter. Somehow I’m thinking, living out here in the Prairie, you’d have every raccoon and his brother licking peanut butter off your car. But if you did use peanut butter, you should be sure to recycle the peanut butter jar and the lid. It just makes good sense.
Shannon Bardwell’s column appears in The Dispatch on Mondays. Email reaches her at [email protected].
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 43 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.