I feel like recycling lately takes more effort than it ever has before, and yet I find myself spending the extra time anyways because ultimately I still think that it’s really, really important.

I mean, seriously – have you ever visited your local landfill?! I have, and it’s kind of depressing … literally driving your car up a mountain of compacted garbage and then just throwing what you’ve got to get rid of wherever to later be plowed over and into other garbage by heavy machinery! 😯

Those mental images from the few trips I’ve had to make to the dump myself are enough to make me do whatever I can to reduce the amount of junk that I’m throwing back into the ground every week. It just sucks because my county right now doesn’t have the most robust recycling program like other places even around the Tampa Bay area where I’ve lived, so it requires some extra work to avoid just pitching everything in the trash instead…

• Glass, plastic, and aluminum cans – these get picked up by our curbside recycling program once every two weeks
• Plastic shopping bags – not accepted, but Walmart has a box where I can drop them off
• Styrofoam – not accepted and I honestly haven’t found a place to take it yet
• Newspapers – not accepted, although I don’t read physical newspapers anymore anyways
• Cardboard boxes – not accepted, but our library has drop-off bins in the parking lot (pictured above)
• Electronics – more uncommon and definitely not accepted, but I learned that Best Buy will let you drop them off

I think cardboard is currently my worst offender right now because not only does it take up a huge amount of space in the garage until I decide to haul it down to the drop-off, but it’s a pain to break down once I’m there – a lot more work than just throwing cans and jars into our bin to carry out to the curb. It’s probably one of the few things that’s given me (slight) pause about using Amazon Prime simply because it’s kind of nuts to see how much cardboard we go through these days just in packing materials from stuff we order online.

I try to justify it by thinking that maybe it’s still better on the environment overall than getting in the car and driving all over town every time that we need something, though I don’t know if that’s actually true! 😕