[speaker001:] Okay, we, we can, uh, be recorded while we talk about it.
[speaker002:] Okay, well is your, does your city have mandatory, uh, recycling?
[speaker001:] No, we don't have mandatory. We, actually, we're kind of slow up here, and we've just started doing recycling probably last summer. And it's all voluntary. So that's interesting. Cities have a mandatory recycling?
[speaker002:] Um, there, there're some places that are strongly encouraging it, and that they city will pick it up. That's been one of the arguments here. I'm just sitting here looking. We've got four bins of glass and plasticine [phonetically spelled] stuff. But we have to carry it, uh, some distance, and some places, um, you can sell your, uh, recyclables, and, for example, our church was collecting newspapers.
[speaker001:] Yeah, when I was a kid we used to collect newspapers and bring them to a recycle thing. We got like a penny a pound for them.
[speaker002:] Well, it turns out that so much, the problem in Texas is that, uh, they've got so much paper now from people recycling that they've got no way to, uh, reprocess it.
[speaker001:] Oh, my,
[speaker002:] It requires an ex-, it requires essentially a paper mill to recycle it, and so the value has gone down. It turns out it wasn't worth for the church to do.
[speaker001:] Oh, I didn't realize, you would think, now up here, I, I suppose they send it all back to the mill and there are paper mills within a couple of hundred miles of, uh. Actually there is one in northern Vermont. So there's probably a paper mill that's sixty miles from here. I didn't think that, you know, in the large city that if the next recycling, if the next mill is more like five hundred miles away
[speaker002:] Well,
[speaker001:] it's a lot of money to transport.
[speaker002:] Yeah, well see, that's, in, in Dallas there no plan to build, I think there, there's some in East Texas there's some pulp mills, but, uh, you have to go to Houston, and, it's interesting, and then there's places that will buy metal and they still buy aluminum can and likes that. *can -] cans? likes -] like?
[speaker001:] Do you have to buy metal, like copper is a very good one to collect. Even aluminum, yeah, so.
[speaker002:] Well, do you do, do you do recycling?
[speaker001:] Uh, we do the recycling, and our city will pick up our recyclables.
[speaker002:] Oh.
[speaker001:] They have these little blue bins. Um, I don't recycle personally. I, I'm saying I want to do it, but, I don't get a lot of magazines, I don't get a, I don't buy the newspaper, but I do have a lot of, uh, my trash has a lot of tin cans and a lot of cart-, a lot of different papers and cardboards.
[speaker002:] Well, do you drink soda and such in aluminum cans?
[speaker001:] Yes, but we have a bottle return. A lot of the northern states and a lot of the Eastern states have bottles. We've had five cent deposits on our bottles for years.
[speaker002:] Oh, so it's worth taking them back. Well, see, we don't have. We have, we have most of our soft drinks are in plastic liter or two liter bottles.
[speaker001:] Oh, they should definitely get, um, the nickel returnable. It's great for the kids, because see, a lot of the kids get the money from it, and it's great for the boy scouts running around, they knock door to door and the collect the bottles sometimes.
[speaker002:] Oh, that's it, you'll, you'll, there is a down side to all this, you know, about no good deed going unpunished,
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] that, uh, my mother sells, um, trees that they make paper out of, and so every time I recycle newspapers, in fact there's a, there's a, uh, Kimberly and Clark, the makers of kleenex and such
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] has a, uh, a big paper mill. In fact I almost went to work for them. I was offered a job and turned it down because my mother got it for me. It's twenty or thirty miles from my house. Every time you recycle, that's one less tree my mother can sell, and, uh. So, it's a question should I be diligent and, um,
[speaker001:] And recycle.
[speaker002:] and, and recycle, and put my mother out of her livelihood.
[speaker001:] Oh, yes, I see that.
[speaker002:] But, it's an interesting point, though, that, you know, everybody's so anxious to recycle, and I suppose it does provide some gainful employment, but,
[speaker001:] But it takes away employment from the resource and its.
[speaker002:] Well, but in general I think it's a good idea because
[speaker001:] I do, too.
[speaker002:] like the glass, you can't argue that the glass, it doesn't biodegrade, and, and, uh, the plastics obviously,
[speaker001:] They don't either [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] So we might as well recycle those.
[speaker001:] Yeah, like I say, it's not a very controversial thing. Everyone thinks we should do it. It's just that we're so lazy, I mean, like personally, I don't want to clean my, I just have can cat food. I don't want to clean the can and take the label off it, and put it in a separate bin.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] You know, I'd just rather get rid of that thing and throw it in the trash.
[speaker002:] Well, that's what we've got. We started about, New Year's we decided we'd get ambitious. Well, we took one load over there, and now we've got these containers filling up with stuff, and, you know, it's not a very high priority thing to go haul these containers over there.
[speaker001:] Yeah, I think I would be like, when I bring my bottles back. If they're pretty clean and stuff, so they can sit in my cellar for a couple of months, and I get a whole bunch of them and bring them ov-, and bring them over. Now, if I had a recycling center and I kept it clean, like if I washed all the cans and things, I wouldn't mind if it sat around too much, but if, if it stunk or something I wouldn't like doing it. But, um, I produce quite a bit of trash, my, you know, house, and I see it, but I don't see so much that I can recycle.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Like I say, it's a lot of different type paper and cardboard. I'm not a real plastic person user, but a lot of paper, um, pretty much, and I don't know how they sort that. But if, if I used a lot of can goods and I do use a lot of laundry detergent and a lot of plastic bottles, I would think that I wou-, I would have a recycling center. But now, it's just me and my husband, so, I don't know.
[speaker002:] But every little bit helps, right.
[speaker001:] Yeah, I know what you're saying. But we have, we have a very aggressive recycling at work, and I'm the one who will pick the newspaper out of the trash and bring it to the recycle bin. See, some people, it's, the recycle bin is on their way out. Instead of carrying your newspapers, when they get done with them at the end of the day, they throw them in the trash.
[speaker002:] Well, do you have separate trash cans at your desk.
[speaker001:] Um, no, we don't, but other, other offices do. They have a box for papers.
[speaker002:] Well, we have, we have one that's recyclable and, and then for uh, lunch sacks and waste food and they gave us a list of things that aren't re-, and it turns out it's not so bad. I, I get a lot of reports that, that are covered in plastic or plas-, like saran wrap or something, {D anyway, } and then, uh, cardboard, there's a few, it's interesting that we're, we're recycling computer type paper.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] And, and, uh, one day they'll pick up, uh, the cleaning people come through and they'll pick up recycled paper, and then the next day they'll pick up the other, so.
[speaker001:] Oh.
[speaker002:] Depending on how much, you know, and there's a lot of, actually, it works pretty well, and then we have a, uh, waste, uh, cans for aluminum in the, in the break areas at work.
[speaker001:] Well, that's, that's a really good idea, because, um, like our, uh, fruit juices for some reason when they're in a can don't come with a deposit.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] And they're thinking about putting a deposit on them, because pretty much you have to, you're having a whole separate recyclable bin just for these fruit cans, where they're
[speaker002:] Yeah,
[speaker001:] so much easier just to put a deposit on it, because most, probably ninety percent of the aluminum cans do have deposits, because they're beer and soda, but when they sell juice, it's some strange quirk in the law, you don't have to have a deposit on it. And even like, the, a very fine juice jar does not have to have a deposit on it, but if it's got soda in it, it does. So, it's a strange.
[speaker002:] That's an interesting distinction.
[speaker001:] Yeah, they should, they should clean, clear that up. It wouldn't take them much to put a stamp on the, uh, juice cans as easily as the soda.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] So, but redemption centers are a big thing up here, they get a penny a can they handle. They give you five cents when they return the can to the distributor. I think they either get a penny or two pennies a can.
[speaker002:] Well, see, well, see, those of us that don't have state income taxes, yet
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] that's the big debate here in Texas, that the legislature wants to put one in, and, it's interesting what people get upset about, uh, it really is.
[speaker001:] Is bot-, is bottle return down there a heated debate?
[speaker002:] Well, no, the, the big issue was, is, is, when we moved here a few years ago, is whether it was okay for you, to, uh, drink beer while you were driving your pickup truck.
[speaker001:] Oh, yeah.
[speaker002:] And throw it out at the in uh,
[speaker001:] Well, we, well, here you can't drink,
[speaker002:] We're not civilized now, you can no longer, you cannot drink beer and drive, but
[speaker001:] Well.
[speaker002:] but it was, it was actually legal.
[speaker001:] Yes, well, I know, I was in Atlanta, and you could walk out the bar with your drink in your hand. But here, Let me put that in a paper cup for you.
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] So that was strange. But, I think, if some people they have, they say, well, we're not going to start a can deposit because you have to get all these, um, the, the recycle center, you have to deal with the can and then you have to, to recycle it, and, their problem's already solved because they can just come to states that do have bottle deposits
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] see how they handle it, and see if it's a good way, and then do it that way. Because, as, like I say, people are making money on it.
[speaker002:] Well, you know, the other,
[speaker001:] The cans do, are worth something.
[speaker002:] Well the other thing is, it also is, is a, is a, a good habit, uh, to, uh, just to conserve resources, you know, where they, you know, because you get in the habit of that, you think in terms of, of, uh, of, of things like saving