Never Have I Been More Excited About Garbage

Or recycling, rather.

In the mid 90's, when my brother came back to the States after having lived in England a few years, he commented, "What the heck happened? I go away and now everyone's separating everything. Aluminum over here. Glass over there. What's going on with you people?!"

Apparently the Recycling Revolution had happened while he was abroad.

Which is funny to me, because I have no idea, exactly, when we all started separating our recyclables. Maybe it's like that Woody Allen story where everyone in the world wakes up one morning to discover they work at a dry cleaner's.

Either way, I'll happily separate my glass from my paper from my aluminum if it means not contributing to  a Texas-sized plastic island floating somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. (My brother, by the way, did eventually come around.)

On the good news front, you can now dump more stuff than ever into your recycle bin in the City of Los Angeles. Like:

All Clean Styrofoam® (Cups, containers, and packaging such as Styrofoam egg shell cartons, Styrofoam block packaging, and Styrofoam clamshell packaging)

All Plastic Bags and All Film Bags (Grocery bags and dry cleaner bags, and all clean film plastic)

All Clean Plastics 1 Through 7 (The little number in the triangle on the cup, bag, etc.)

All Aluminum, Tin, Metal, and Bi-Metal Cans (Rinsed if possible, soda, juice, soup, vegetables, and pet food cans; pie tins; clean aluminum foils; empty paint and aerosol cans with plastic caps removed, and wire hangers)

All Clean Dry Paper (All unwanted mail, flyers, telephone books, note cards, newspaper, blueprints, magazines, file folders, paper bags, Post-it notes, catalogs; and all envelopes including those with windows)

All Cardboard Boxes and Chipboard  (Cereal, tissue, dry food, frozen food, shoe, and detergent boxes; paper and toilet rolls; and corrugated boxes)

The whole list is here on their site. 

See, aren't you excited too?

(Man, I need to start getting out on weekends...)

(Picture of unproofed sign courtesy of Steve Jenkins by way of Creative Commons.)