21 Things That You CAN Recycle

This is, by no means, a total evasion of original posting on my part. I'm just playing catch up and fighting off a cold. Besides...this is pretty vital info and anything I can do to help spread the word, I will do.

So, without further ado, here's CoOp America's list of 21 Things That Really Are Recyclable:

1. Appliances: Goodwill accepts working appliances, www.goodwill.org, or you can contact the Steel Recycling Institute to recycle them. 800/YES-1-CAN, www.recycle-steel.org.

2. Batteries: Rechargeables and single-use: Battery Solutions, 734/467-9110, www.batteryrecycling.com.

3. Cardboard boxes: Contact local nonprofits and women's shelters to see if they can use them. Or, offer them up at your local Freecycle.org listserv or on Craigslist.org. If your workplace collects at least 100 boxes or more each month, UsedCardboardBoxes.com accepts them for resale.

4. CDs/DVDs/Game Disks: Send scratched music or computer CDs, DVDs, and PlayStation or Nintendo video game disks to AuralTech for refinishing, and they'll work like new: 888/454-3223, www.auraltech.com.

5. Clothes: Wearable clothes can go to your local Goodwill outlet or shelter. Donate wearable women's business clothing to Dress for Success, which gives them to low-income women as they search for jobs, 212/532-1922, www.dressforsuccess.org. Offer unwearable clothes and towels to local animal boarding and shelter facilities, which often use them as pet bedding. Consider holding a clothes swap at your office, school, faith congregation or community center. Swap clothes with friends and colleagues, save money on a new fall wardrobe and back-to-school clothes – then donate the rest.

6. Compact fluorescent bulbs: Take them to your local IKEA store for recycling: www.ikea.com.

7. Compostable bio-plastics: You probably won't be able to compost these in your home compost bin or pile. Find a municipal composter to take them to at www.findacomposter.com.

8. Computers and electronics: Find the most responsible recyclers, local and national, at www.ban.org/pledge/Locations.html

9. Exercise videos: Swap them with others at www.videofitness.com.

10. Eyeglasses: Your local Lion's Club or eye care chain may collect these. Lenses are reground and given to people in need.

11. Foam Packing peanuts: Your local pack-and-ship store will likely accept these for reuse. Or, call the Plastic Loose Fill Producers Council to find a drop-off site: 800/828-2214. For places to drop off foam blocks for recycling, contact the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers, 410/451-8340, www.epspackaging.org/info.html

12. Ink/toner cartridges: Recycleplace.com pays $1/each.

13. Miscellaneous: Get your unwanted items into the hands of people who can use them. Offer them up on your local Freecycle.org or Craigslist.org listserv, or try giving them away at Throwplace.com or giving or selling them at iReuse.com. iReuse.com will also help you find a recycler, if possible, when your items have reached the end of their useful lifecycle.

14. Oil: Find Used Motor Oil Hotlines for each state: 202/682-8000, www.recycleoil.org.

15. Phones: Donate cell phones: Collective Good will refurbish your phone and sell it to someone in a developing country: 770/856-9021, www.collectivegood.com. Call to Protect reprograms cell phones to dial 911 and gives them to domestic violence victims: www.donateaphone.com. Recycle single-line phones: Reclamere, 814/386-2927, www.reclamere.com.

16. Sports equipment: Resell or trade it at your local Play It Again Sports outlet, 800/476-9249, www.playitagainsports.com.

17. “Technotrash”: Easily recycle all of your CDs, jewel cases, DVDs, audio and video tapes, cell phones, pagers, rechargeable and single-use batteries, PDAs, and ink/toner cartridges with GreenDisk's Technotrash program. For $30, GreenDisk will send you a cardboard box in which you can ship them up to 70 pounds of any of the above. Your fee covers the box as well as shipping and recycling fees. 800/305-GREENDISK, www.greendisk.com.

18. Tennis shoes: Nike's Reuse-a-Shoe program turns old shoes into playground and athletic flooring. www.nikereuseashoe.com. One World Running will send still-wearable shoes to athletes in need in Africa, Latin America, and Haiti. www.oneworldrunning.com.

19. Toothbrushes and razors: Buy a recycled plastic toothbrush or razor from Recycline, and the company will take it back to be recycled again into plastic lumber. Recycline products are made from used Stonyfield Farms' yogurt cups. 888/354-7296, www.recycline.com.

20. Tyvek envelopes: Quantities less than 25: Send to Shirley Cimburke, Tyvek Recycling Specialist, 5401 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Spot 197, Room 231, Richmond, VA 23234. Quantities larger than 25, call 866/33-TYVEK.

21. Stuff you just can't recycle: When practical, send such items back to the manufacturer and tell them they need to manufacture products that close the waste loop responsibly.

Common Sense Hippiedom v. New Age Narcissism

Wow... I have REALLY been a.w.o.l. from this blog.

It's "funny" how much time and energy the end of the term, end of the school year, end of my teaching contract and end of my roommate's lease have taken up.

I'm "a little" stressed at the moment. I suppose unemployment, combined with health issues, and the loss of my supplementary income (roommate) are making me a little crazed. That and the lovely side effects of the Lupron I am taking to help shrink my fibroid for operation number two.

That's why I am VERY glad I'd booked a trip to Santa Cruz months ago, for last week. Southwest had a crazy fare sale, and it only cost me $70 round-trip to go back to Cali for five days.

I spent a surprisingly small amount of money while there, thanks in large part to my friends' generous hospitality. But also, I realized that there was very little about Santa Cruz that I missed, and therefore little incentive to spend like a credit-crazed nut-job.

Santa Cruz is way too expensive for what you get. I mean, the Rite Aid charged $11 for a generic 5 subject notebook!

And the town is a little over-stuffed with New Age Narcissists, the majority of whom were (at one point I'm sure) well-meaning, Agape-Gaia loving hippies.

Back when they were hippies, they articulated a solid dose of common sense:

• pay attention to what you put in and on your body, who makes it and under what conditions;
  
• the Golden Rule is a universal maxim, best embraced by all;
  
• the environment matters, because without it, we're all dead.

Just good, common sense.

But then some of them went off the deep end.

In the pursuit of deeper, more "authentic" truths, some folks cultivated a special knack for gourmand navel-gazing. They borrowed lingo and practices from every non-white tradition they could find and/or "discovered" they were one of the exponentially-improbable heirs of the Druids or the Gaels; but it all seemed to serve the higher purpose of ... the Cult of Me. What do I want? What is my purpose, independent of others? What is my journey?

Don't get me wrong. These are good questions. Vital questions that we all need to examine as we live out our lives. I just take issue with the over-emphasis on the "I" to the point of selfishness. The myth of New Age Narcissism that I remembered and witnessed in Santa Cruz, is the myth of the self-made wo/man who is not beholden to silly little things like social mores, loyalty and genuine generosity of spirit.

The poster child par excellence of this is K, a guy I once dated (that's my pathetic disclosure), and who went on to date and totally head-f*ck my dear friend, M (who, ironically, I met through K - that's my happy disclosure).

I admire folks who manage their resources well, and always seem to have enough time, money and sanity to live a well-balanced life. I aspire to that myself, having fallen off of ALL of those wagons to varying degrees over the years. I used to think K was like that. But then I got to know him. K is stingy - with his time, money and emotional availability. When I met him, I didn't really care as I was rebounding and was really only interested in a good time. But the times with K really weren't all that good. Then I began to care more about his stinginess as I got to know M better, and saw the toll his crap was taking on her. Sure, she could've left him and not gone back. But Santa Cruz is one VERY small town, and in a lot of ways, K was one of the better options.

I also admire folks who know how to set boundaries, so that they don't end up over-extended. But there is a clear difference between "boundaries" and "the Great Wall of China." K is a wall-builder. Inside his wall, is a little boy trying to figure out how much money, property, and tight young ass he can amass, while outside the wall there's ... well who cares, it's outside the wall. Unfortunately, M was outside the wall.

And it all came to a head when he made a proposal-that-wasn't that actually trumped the proposal-that-wasn't I had received from a wall-builder I dated back-in-the-day.

Finding himself in a potentially sticky tax dilemma ($45k liability) with the impending sale of his house, K suggested to M that they should get married, as that would significantly lessen the tax hit. He would give her $8k "for nothing" and once the paperwork went through and a reasonable time had passed...they could get divorced. Uh...yeah. Just what his girlfriend of four years wanted to hear. As if his earlier suggestions that they have an open relationship (all the rage in Santa Cruz, you see) didn't already convey the scope of his selfishness, he then turns around and does this. WTF?!

But here's the clincher. M is the one who feels guilty. For actually expecting a commitment. For daring to think that she deserves a relationship with someone who actually thinks with his heart, instead of just his wallet or his dick. And it doesn't help that so many of the Santa Cruz N.A.N.-crowd suggest that perhaps she should just learn to embrace an open relationship and not take things so much to heart. Let him "bring the energy home," they suggest. Which is double-speak for, "let him bring his girl-toy home, and you can enjoy it/her together." Shame on M for not being inclined to share.

Eck! Eck! Eck! And yet, as annoyed as I got with the K saga, I managed to have a nice time in Santa Cruz thanks to a $15 private tub and sauna, delicious food and hanging out with M, who had a lot of other things to talk about other than N.A.N. K.

Now I get that the B.S. with K tickles some raw spots in my own emotional baggage handler. I also get that in the time it has taken me to write this, I have had two lupron-induced hot flashes and am vacillating between tears, nausea and feminazi fury. But even taking these "little issues" into consideration, I still think he is a textbook example of New Age Narcissism, and why, so often it does more harm than good.

And with that, I'm going to lie down.

Trying to live sustainably WITHOUT developing ecochondria

Sometimes, I really like the internet and customized searches. Without them, I never would have read a rather funny, yet totally understandable column by Joy Colangelo of The Monterey Herald.

While she did not use the nasty little five-letter word, what she talks about is guilt. Guilt for what one's choices - even the ones with good intentions - may be doing inadvertently to the planet.

She recycles some interesting factoids:

• When one factors in the product life-cycle of all the components of a Prius, one might have less of an impact on the environment if one buys a Hummer.
  
• In the pesticide battle, it might be better to use a little biological warfare rather than capitulate to those pesky invasive species that are transforming ecosystems.
• Organic t-shirts may be organic, but they also take 25 gallons of water to make.

Her tone (which I presume is a little tongue-in-cheek) is a bit frantic a la Scarlett's "Where shall I go? What shall I do?!"

BUT...

She has a point.

I guess as long as the industrial, manufacturing and agricultural domains focus on cradle-to-grave systems of production, rather than shifting towards cradle-to-cradle systems (a la McDonough and Braungart's Cradle to Cradle), we will all have to regularly choose between the lesser of evils and do what we can to make our day-to-day lives as common-sense sustainable as we can.

To that end, it just makes sense to collect roof run-off in a rain barrel and use it in the garden. OR if you're like my aunt's dear friend in Toledo who "plants" silk flower arrangements in her yard, then you can use the run-off for a water feature like a pond (treated with organic mosquitocide, of course) or a pond-less waterfall.

As for the Prius-Hummer comparison... well, unless the materials that go into a Hummer are significantly less toxic and less traveled than those of a Prius, I still say that the Prius' green cred trumps the Hummer's any day of the week.

Personally, as part of my hippiefication, I plan to sell my car in a couple of weeks: to save money; make some money; force me to get a bike and actually USE it; and yes, do my part to save the planet one bike ride, bus trip and (HOPEFULLY) Flexcar reservation at a time.