Posted by Snow in Recycling has broadened in our lifetime into so much more than mere soda cans and glass bottle collection. Today, sophisticated public recycling with computerized voucher systems for grocery stores function smoothly in suburban settings. No more sketchy trips into debatable areas. Now, saving those plastic soda bottles from sea water and reclamation plant processes seems better, even in addition to the small cash reward. Recycling now carries green peace of mind.
The concept that available resources are limited has finally arrived. Greenhouse effects are debatably in effect. All consumers agree that to build and keep up homes with dynamics of energy, human process flow, and daily household requirements demands efficiencies that are not always present. But recycling no longer applies only to green re-use of tin or glass. Wood has become the hot recyclable.
The age of recycling wood has come. Reclaimed natural or finished wood abounds in cities like Portland, Oregon, where reclaimed or re-used furniture with sourced pieces from other projects or former objects is a growing trade. Reclaimed wood can be a shaved slice of a tree trunk laid bare on the coffee table. In the Pacific Northwest, a slice of tree trunk can BE the coffee table. Stores with products and furniture of wholly reclaimed wood allow for a second life for previously “throwaway” items.
What kind of stone can be used to make your garden pathway? Newly mined or reclaimed from a previous home owner’s use? How feasible is straw bale construction with your available pool of labor? Did your new furniture come trucked in from a supplier on the other side of the country, and does its finishes and stains result from off gassing and toxinous treatment?
Recycling is a matter of adding up the ones and the twos. If everyone in your neighborhood stopped using fresh pipe water for every use, with a system of gray water and rain water uses, how much reduction in energy costs from local power and water production facilities could result? How much lower could your water bill have been this year if everyone in the city had reduced fresh water usage 30%?
Recycling tasks its adherents with some hard questions. Getting the answers to recycling questions can demand extra diligence.
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