I get it about recycling.  How many times do you spend the week carefully separating plastic from your cardboard from your glass, only to bring it down to the containers and find your 90-year old neighbor has dumped a dried floral arrangement from 1976 right in the middle of the bin? 

I’d like to think trash leprechauns are moving among the recycling bins, separating the good from the bad.  But it is probably more like someone takes a look at the poorly-separated pile, deems it unacceptable, and dumps it in the New Jersey wetlands.  (As if life were just one big Sopranos episode…which, I suppose, it isn’t.)   And as green warriors, it’s our job to defend recycling from the doubters.  So how do you do that when you’re staring into a recycling bin filled with banana peels and oil containers? 

1. Recycling Works

The most common argument non-recyclers give is "It doesn't make a difference." Au contraire! There's lots of hard facts proving that it DOES. Recycling aluminum not only saves energy (3% of the world's electricity, usually fossil-fuel created, goes to creating cans from new materials), but it also reduces dangerous and polluting aluminum mining. According to the Container Recycling Institute, "Each ton of aluminum cans requires 5 tons of bauxite ore to be strip-mined, crushed, washed, and refined into alumina before it is smelted." Recyling glass also uses less energy than making new, and plastics are really easy to melt down and make into new shapes - and plastics are made of petroleum, so recycling them saves oil too.

You can help save resources by both recycling whenever you can, and supporting bottle bills. California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New York all have legislation that offers at least a five-cent deposit back on beverage containers, and the rate of recycling is much, much higher in these states. Kansas represents the heartland with a recently-proposed bill to do the same. California reported over 13 billion containers were recycled in 2006, which was 814 million more than the year prior. 

In areas where organics are composted instead of landfilled there has been a huge savings for local municipalities- in North London the city has been able to avoid building two new incinerators by encouraging recycling and composting.

2. Save (and Even Earn) Money

Perhaps the best way to encourage recycling in our current economy is to point out that you can get paid for it.  And with landfill space becoming more and more scarce and pricy (no, that wasn't just a late-80's problem that disappeared when we started ignoring it), you may see municpalities charging (or charging more) for garbage pickup in the near future. Encourage the doubters to seek direct returns by checking out the following options:

First, there is RecycleBank. Sign up with this seriously-awesome organization, and you will get gift certificates for food and pharmacy items.  And this is just for recycling glass, paper, and plastic.  Plus, you don’t have to sort it.  In the neighborhoods where this program has been implemented, there is a 100% to 1000% increase in recycling rates.

Then there’s Cell For Cash. This company will send you a postage paid box for your cell phone.  They will verify the phone and then cut you a check.  (They refurbish the phone and then sell them to developing countries.) Cell phones are considered hazardous waste so you’re not supposed to trash them – so why not get some cash out of it?

Lastly, there’s the fabulouslly-named  Gazelle. Along the same lines at Cell for Cash, this company will buy your old electronics from you.  They will pay you via Paypal or you can donate to charity.  They will even take price quotes if you can’t find your item on their site.

3. Go Beyond Recycling and Think About the Future

Several green thinkers think recycling should be abolished.  Chemist and author Paul Palmer suggests that recycling is dead, “relying on yesterday's methods and advancing no new ideas to inspire the public.”  Palmer promotes the theory of zero waste – waste is just resources in disguise! The group has worked with businesses like Xerox and Hewlett-Packard to reduce garbage (and has saved them millions in the process). Ideally, we should be able to create products that take into account complete lifecycles, using extras, whether that be heavy metals, water, or energy from one area, to make something else (kinda like nature does, well, naturally).

So next time your friend or neighbor balks at recycling, tell them that maybe they're right, but until we get to a system of Zero Waste, it's the right thing to do so the next generation can figure out how to do it better.

Disclaimer: I was born in Indiana. That means I have experienced all four seasons, including the beauty and majesty each one has to offer. Having lived in San Francisco for the past 2 years, many of my friends and family assume that I love being snow-free during the winters. Wrong! At first, the idea of having no snow to shovel or trudge through was refreshing, especially after living in Connecticut for 7 years, where winter happily makes itself known. Slowly but surely, the idea of experiencing the end of the year without snow just felt … alien. Had I grown but in, say, Puerto Rico or Texas, maybe Christmas in short-sleeve shirts would seem completely natural. Instead, I'm a homespun farm girl who love everything nature has to offer. Lately, many say due to global warming (and I agree with them), the weather has gone completely wacko. There has been more rain than snow in Massachusetts and Connecticut; Orlando, Florida was 80 degrees the other day; but the ultimate proof that things have truly gone nutty is that is snowed almost 4 inches in Las Vegas a few weeks back! Snow … in Vegas … something just isn't right about that … that feels alien. Maybe we should all be thankful that the weather patterns are shifting. Soon, central states all across the United States will be able to put away their tire chains and relax in lawn chairs during Thanksgiving, while folks in Vegas, Texas, and Georgia get covered in many feet of snow. It sounds extreme, but that is the way the weather is headed - 2008 is proof of that. Storms will get more violent, summers will be hotter, winters will be colder, and unexpected events will become commonplace.

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Navigating the world of green toothpaste is a little like trying to find a good handbag at a discount store - lots dodging of formidable land mines (aka ladies) who are determined to find that $50 Kate Spade, even if it means blowing up a few people along the way. So why bother? Well, because it's not considered a food, conventional toothpaste contains lots of potentially harmful stuff, including artificial colors, flavors and sweeters that are known to cause cancer in lab animals, like saccharine. Not to mention fluoride, which many natural health advocates insist is bad news. Since 1997, the FDA has required that all fluoride toothpastes carry warning labels. Don't believe me? Check out your tube. Mine reads "If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away."

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