$6.00 gas, $2.50 recycling
you know i bet people in california would recycle more if it wasn't so damned hard to do it. only certain places are allowed to take your recyclables and give you $ for em (for non-CA residents: you pay a deposit to buy anything packaged in plastic or glass; you get the deposit back if you take your stuff to a state-operated recycle center, or you can leave them with the trash and "independent contractors," who are sometimes real companies and sometime just homeless people going through the trash, pick them up and they get the deposit). since i am from MI and fiercely love deposits i was not going to allow an independent contractor to get my deposit money! and there is my folly of the day.
i went online and found out the above and located my nearest 4 recycle centers open on saturdays. i took my 55 beer bottles (collected over the past 3.5 months, i'm not that much of a lush) and drove to von's, 1 mile east of my house. their recycle center was open according to the state website, but no one was there, so i couldn't turn in my bottles for the 4 cents per bottle that i so richly deserved. i drove to the next recycle center, 2 miles further east. it was open, but they were not accepting any more glass. i turned around and drove 5 miles west to ralph's, where their recycle center was closed altogether because their bins were full.
a toothless, barefoot, cigarette-smoking woman in a housedress walked by and gave me a tip: albertson's on ocean park and lincoln has a recycle center. so i drive 6 miles west, turn in my bottles, get a receipt, stand in line at the customer service center for 10 minutes to get my $2.50 in cash, and drive home.
one thing that really annoyed me about this trip was that each recycling center has a sign that says, "we cannot serve customers who bring recyclables in a shopping cart." yet they really mean "we don't accept recyclables from homeless people," because i used a shopping cart to manage my bottles and nobody said anything to me.
i wish i had a friend who i could strong-arm into joining me on these sorts of trips. it would have made all of it a lot better.
i went online and found out the above and located my nearest 4 recycle centers open on saturdays. i took my 55 beer bottles (collected over the past 3.5 months, i'm not that much of a lush) and drove to von's, 1 mile east of my house. their recycle center was open according to the state website, but no one was there, so i couldn't turn in my bottles for the 4 cents per bottle that i so richly deserved. i drove to the next recycle center, 2 miles further east. it was open, but they were not accepting any more glass. i turned around and drove 5 miles west to ralph's, where their recycle center was closed altogether because their bins were full.
a toothless, barefoot, cigarette-smoking woman in a housedress walked by and gave me a tip: albertson's on ocean park and lincoln has a recycle center. so i drive 6 miles west, turn in my bottles, get a receipt, stand in line at the customer service center for 10 minutes to get my $2.50 in cash, and drive home.
one thing that really annoyed me about this trip was that each recycling center has a sign that says, "we cannot serve customers who bring recyclables in a shopping cart." yet they really mean "we don't accept recyclables from homeless people," because i used a shopping cart to manage my bottles and nobody said anything to me.
i wish i had a friend who i could strong-arm into joining me on these sorts of trips. it would have made all of it a lot better.