Reduce, Reuse...

Recycle!

An update on Switzerland is forthcoming, I promise. In the meantime, we are really excited to share our latest green initiative with the world. As you know, Landon is starting his Master's studies in the fall, and he will be doing extensive research on climatology (I'll just say here, yes, we are the crazy environmentalists you all hate, and yes, we do subscribe to the theory of global climate change, and no, I don't think this is a good venue to argue it. If you want to talk about it, give Landon a call, he loves nothing more than debating these things). Within the vein of his preferred studies, one of our goals as a family has been to be more environmentally conscious. It really can't hurt anything to take care of our earth, right? We've been doing the reusable grocery bag thing for awhile, and we've started a huge garden with our own compost pile, and we try to car pool when we can. A few months ago, I was lamenting that we had no recycling center in Provo. In the midst of my whining, I realized I really hadn't looked or asked what was available. I just assumed it wasn't possible, because none of our neighbors do it. Silly me! After a simple Google search, I found out that you can take plastics, paper, cardboard, and tin to a compost dump right down the street from our neighborhood for free! So we started a box full of things we wanted to recycle. That box has been sitting outside our door-- looking very unsightly-- ever since, overflowing eventually into TWO boxes and looking even worse. Finally, Tuesday evening, we made the trip out to the Compost center. It's a bit difficult to find, but find it we did, and as we dumped our boxes into the bin, we both had such a great feeling. Accomplishment, goodwill, and a little bit of unrighteous pride at what we were doing. We felt good!

From now on, we will be making a recycling run every two weeks (usually it will be on Saturdays), and would be more than happy to add others' boxes to our load. Give us a call or send us an email, and we'll stop by and pick it up for you (as long as you live in Utah Valley)! If you're interested in this, let me know and I can even send out reminder emails. Or, if you prefer to do it yourself, you can find more information about recycling in Provo here. And if you don't live in Provo, I'd encourage you to look into recycling options in your town. Many cities have curbside pickup for a very small monthly fee, or places to drop of recycling for free. Let's go out and do some good!