If I called this post "Bin Laden", you would wilfully misunderstand me

[desperance]

I have a new recycling bin, hurrah: new rules, new possibilities. I seem to have spent half the morning sorting out stuff that I don't need and they will take, simply for the pleasure of filling it. I like new toys, and I like feeling like a good and useful member of the community.

Also, I am intrigued by what they will and won't take. Cardboard! Yay! That's new; there's been nothing to do with cardboard till now, except tear it up and put it in the compost (which is not a problem, except that I generate far more compost already than I can actually use in my concrete sliver of a yard, so anything that reduces volume is a good thing).

Brown envelopes: they will take white envelopes (so long as they don't have windows), but not brown. Boo! Also, WTF? You'd think - I would have thought - that brown paper was the easiest to recycle, being so cheap and coarse already. But no, apparently. I shall have to keep shredding 'em and adding 'em to the compost. Okey-doke.

Really, all this jittery recycling is because I have drunk an enormous quantity of coffee and am due to do an author chat at Flycon in an hour. Which I am a little edgy about, never having done this before, and being as it were the first act onstage. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, and those are troublesome enough to begin with. So: not working much, not doing anything much, really glad to have the recycling-bin to play with. *jitters*

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

You will, of course, awe and delight your hearers.
I don't get the brown envelope thing either. Bizarre.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

We have recent recycling bins too. Ours don't differentiate, they'll take all kinds of paper, but not all kinds of plastic (they won't even take some cartons that say they are recyclable. And they won't take glass. Other neighbourhoods havea sparate glass recycling box - which makes sense, but as yet we don't, spo we still have to take our glass to the bottle bank - the nearest being the local tip where we used to take the plastic as well.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ours have a separate glass caddy in the top of the bin. Which is exceedingly welcome, as it saves me hauling it all to the bottle bank at the supermarket, which is a mile or more away. Wine bottles and catfudz tins, plus all the junk mail and other garbage that comes through the door: this constitutes the vast majority of my recycling. And the nice binpeople will take it all, hurrah...

[karenmiller.livejournal.com]

Have fun at Flycon! Alas, I must pass out now for in a mere 5 1/2 hours I have to be coherent at the same event.

Arrgghh!

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I can assure you that desperance did indeed awe, delight, charm, and distract his audience!

[song-of-copper.livejournal.com]

Recycling customs seem to make very little sense, really! I do wish our binmen would take cardboard: having moved not so long ago, and had to buy various household appliances, I have (literally) an entire room filled with cardboard, and no means of taking it to the tip. I suppose I should do something creative with it (build an extension, perhaps!), but currently I am treating it as a sort of 'art installation'-cum-source of stress (because I tend to spend more time looking at it and feeling an upsurge of mild panic than I do actually sorting it out!)...

The title to this entry made my day! :-)

If your journal is anything to go by, Flycon will go swimmingly (...oh dear, was that a mixed metaphor?!). :-)

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

I wrote to the company who recycle in Durham (Greencycle Plc.) (how sad is that?) and had this reply: Please let me thank you for recycling in Durham and helping us to achieve such excellent recycling percentage figures as we have over the first three months of the new scheme. No it is not necessary to remove the windows from envelopes, we deal with recyclers who are able to handle the envelopes whole.

But there's an extra twist in Durham and quite probably in other towns with a student population. Students come to Durham and apply the recycling rules that apply in their home town, but don't necessarily apply here.

And yes, Flycon went swimmingly, as did shewhomust and I afterwards.