Big Blue Carts

During the last couple of weeks the City of Austin has delivered a big blue cart to every residence and duplex in the city - some 120,000 carts. It's similar to our garbage cart, but bigger (than ours, at least) - capable of holding 60 gallons of stuff. And what stuff would that be? Why recycled stuff of course.

In the past we've had a little blue bin and we would put all our newspapers and recyclable paper and #2 bottles and our cans in it (actually we had 2 bins - one for paper and one for bottles & cans, but that was just for our convenience). Every Tuesday evening we would put them out on the curb and every Tuesday night someone would come by and scavenge the aluminum cans from them and early Wednesday morning the City would pick up what was left, a meager pound or two of newspapers and a few glass jars.

So what are we going to do with a 60 gallon cart, besides take up the very last space available in the garage? But along with the new carts, the recycling rules have changed. Everything goes in the carts - no more mashing cans and stomping on soft drink bottles. And we get to recycle all plastics from #1 to #7, plus pasteboard like cereal boxes and also cardboard. Just toss 'er in there, thank you very much. And oh by the way, we'll only be by every 2 weeks to gather your contributions.

So how much recycling flora and fauna can our small household generate in two weeks? Well, we've had the cart 5 days and it's half full, about 30 gallons worth. That does include last week's bin offerings which they didn't pick up since we got the cart instead. I'm actually rather amazed. But the cart has put us in a recycling frame of mind and now we look at every bottle cap and container and divert every scrap of paper, no matter how small to the big blue bin. Just call us Ecology in Austin.