Monday, September 06, 2010

Why Can’t We All Just Learn to Recycle?



You’re not seeing things—that’s a piano….sitting by a dumpster. It’s being thrown out. It wasn’t a particularly good piano (I couldn’t get it to make a sound), but you’d think its last owner could have found another home for it instead of simply tossing it out on the junk heap, wouldn’t you?

I discovered the piano the other night while out walking with the hubby. He honestly didn’t see it when I pointed it out to him, and he’s got better eyesight than I do. The reason he didn’t see it was probably because there are so many items being dumped in our neighborhood on a weekly basis that something the size of a piano doesn’t really make a mark on your conscious. We regularly spy sofas, overstuffed chairs, kitchen tables, end tables, mattresses, dressers, plastic cabinets, bookshelves, entertainment centers, televisions, lamps, urns, carpets, Christmas decorations, etc., being put out with the trash. A lot of these items we’ve put to good use, too.




And before you ask, yes, we do have mandatory recycling where we live. We have to sort our garbage out into bins for plastics, papers, metals and other recyclable materials. But for some unknown reason, you can’t make people pick up the phone and call Goodwill or the Salvation Army to take away these large items to sell and put the money to good use. Sad, isn’t it?

If you don’t want to garage sale your items, put them on Craig's List, or donate them to a charity shop, people like us will continue to put them to good use ourselves (if we can use and/or move the item—the piano was a bit out of our league). But wouldn’t it be nice if we could all come up with a better alternative to rid ourselves of old furniture items rather than sending them off to the landfill?

4 comments :

Nancy D said...

Sad, isn't it. I have friend whose son works for a local garbage collector and she said it's amazing the stuff he finds, especially in wealthy neighborhoods. One house regularly threw out clothes that had never even been worn and still had the tags on it! He "rescued" those and took them to Goodwill.
I recycle everything they'll take at the local recycle center, and recently called around to find someone to take an old microwave and TV (both non-functioning). Found a taker for the microwave, but no one would take the TV, so it was sitting in the garage waiting for a dump run, when fortune struck in the form of an ad in the paper that the recycle center was holding a one day collection for electronics. Yay! I'm currently gathering stuff for a garage sale, but whatever doesn't sell will go to charity, not the dump. I do pitch junk, but I really hate the idea of useful stuff taking up space in the landfill. And on that note, I'll get off the soapbox now and hand it off to the next person :).

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Hi,
I completely agree with what you have shared here. Sometimes the garbage from outside the wealthy people houses are so in a good condition that it can after some recycling looks new and also it can be sold at a good amount.

Thanks for highlighting this issue. I think everyone should take part in recycling things that can be easily use by other people.

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Bluebear Jeff said...

When we were going to move to Canada we had a lot of furniture . . . good, but not GOOD (valuable) . . . that we weren't going to take with us.

Yes, some went to an auction house, but a lot of it we would simply put on the sidewalk with a "FREE" sign . . . and it all got plucked by people who could use it.


-- Jeff

Anonymous said...

SAD WHEN PEOPLE DO THIS AS THE WORLD GOES HUNGRY AND IN RAGS. I RECYLE EVERYTHING AND DONATE CLOTHES TO PLACES THAT NEVER CHARGE A PENNY.
I'M IN THE EC BLOG CONTEST AND COULD SURE USE VOTES!

LINDA B
linda_bass@sbcglobal.net

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