Any time an individual or family moves from one locale to another, there's a tendency to judge the new digs as opposed to the old domicile. Upon arriving in Aberdeen, one of the first things my wife & I looked at was the area's recycling program. How would it measure up to the program in good 'ol Salem, Oregon?
Salem's program, run in conjunction with Marion County, is a fairly good one. Co-mingled recycling is picked up curbside and the number of items eligible is laudable. You can put batteries, paint, plastic containers, newsprint, mixed paper, greyboard, cardboard, aluminum, tin cans, motor oil and several other items out at the curb for bi-weekly pick-up. If you have items that don't fall onto the curbside list, you are still afforded the opportunity to dispose of most anything else at 3 transfer stations positioned around town.
While Aberdeen does have a curbside recycling program, it pales in comparison to Salem's or even Olympia's (a mere 50 miles to the east). While the Salem program provides a huge recycling receptacle for each customer's use, Aberdeen provides 3 little bins. The blue bin is for glass. The light grey bin is for tin cans and aluminum foil. The beige bin is for newspapers.
Aberdeen also allows each customer to place at the curb two paper sacks filled with mixed paper and corrugated cardboard. Milk jugs can be recycled too, but each family must tote them to the transer station themselves.
That's it (except for some provisions for hazardous waste)! What strikes me as rather odd is that while milk jugs are eligible to be recycled, no other types of plastic bottle are. Thus, yogurt cups, drink bottles, shampoo containers go into the trash with lots of greyboard. And all this gets transported to the landfill.
I guess I should be thankful that Aberdeen recycles at all!
Salem's program, run in conjunction with Marion County, is a fairly good one. Co-mingled recycling is picked up curbside and the number of items eligible is laudable. You can put batteries, paint, plastic containers, newsprint, mixed paper, greyboard, cardboard, aluminum, tin cans, motor oil and several other items out at the curb for bi-weekly pick-up. If you have items that don't fall onto the curbside list, you are still afforded the opportunity to dispose of most anything else at 3 transfer stations positioned around town.
While Aberdeen does have a curbside recycling program, it pales in comparison to Salem's or even Olympia's (a mere 50 miles to the east). While the Salem program provides a huge recycling receptacle for each customer's use, Aberdeen provides 3 little bins. The blue bin is for glass. The light grey bin is for tin cans and aluminum foil. The beige bin is for newspapers.
Aberdeen also allows each customer to place at the curb two paper sacks filled with mixed paper and corrugated cardboard. Milk jugs can be recycled too, but each family must tote them to the transer station themselves.
That's it (except for some provisions for hazardous waste)! What strikes me as rather odd is that while milk jugs are eligible to be recycled, no other types of plastic bottle are. Thus, yogurt cups, drink bottles, shampoo containers go into the trash with lots of greyboard. And all this gets transported to the landfill.
I guess I should be thankful that Aberdeen recycles at all!
Hey Trey,
ReplyDeleteI've posted here as Patrick...it took me a day or two to realize that I DID setup a Blogger account a few months back! :-)
Hey, my g/f and I are trying to move to the Seattle area...Aberdeen is down by the coast, right? How's the scenery there? Do you get a good view of the Olympians?
Patrick,
ReplyDeleteYou mean when there's no fog? ;-) We're about 100 miles south of the Olympians, I think.
During an interview vacation/trip to Seattle, I WAS able to see them...at Dusk ;-) when the light was filtering past them...that puget sound fog has a mind of its own man! I saw it swallow bainbridge island one afternoon.
ReplyDelete