I'm a "militant" recycler and get upset when I see stuff that should be in a recycling bin but isn't. I even built my own compost tumbler and rain collection system for my backyard. Don't forget that reducing and reusing are even better than recycling.

Here in the UK, most (if not all) local authorities provide two household waste bins; one for ordinary household waste and one for recyleables. My local authority also collects glass once a month. Additionally, I pay a small monthly fee for a bin for garden waste, which the council collects fortnightly and turns into compost.

My supermarket delivery also takes back their plastic shopping bags and recycles them.

I recycle everything possible. We have to take it to the dump, but they take plastic, paper, cardboard and glass. All of my leftover food goes to the pigs, I put egg shells, tea bags, and coffee grounds into the manure pile. We use that in the garden. I reuse all my straws, and also have bought steel ones. I keep my washed straws in the car. I take my own containers when I go out to eat, to use for leftovers, so I don't have to use Styrofoam. I use shopping bags so I don't have to get plastic ones. I only have to take my garbage to the dump every 2 - 3 weeks instead of every week. I was stuff that I can't recycle so my garbage doesn't smell. My clothes are either donated or used for rags. I talked one of favorite restaurants into using cardboard take out cartons instead of Styrofoam. One idea for paper or things like pizza boxes that have food on them so can't be recycled, is to put them down in your garden to keep weeds down. They will decompose.

As a lifelong Democrat and environmentalist, I always recycle, even though it's not collected at my building. I take paper, cardboard, plastic and glass to a recycling center.

As a hiker, I pick up litter while hiking. When we see illegal trash dumped in a gully, we call environmentalist friends and clean it up.

NEVER use baby wipes while hiking and camping. They do not decompose. Animals dig them up. Poop-smeared baby wipes blow all over the landscape. It's disgusting. I refuse to touch them. I use my hands to eat.

Also return plastic grocery bags to grocery stores.

Batteries can be recycled at a local hardware store. UPS picks up box of spent batteries each week, drives over the Cascade Mountains, and takes them to a battery recycling center 130 miles away. Bravo!

This is the right thing to do.

I recycle anything that I can, and avoid using products that cannot be recycled. I sell clothing I no longer want/need on eBay. I make my own deodorant and toothpaste and reuse the containers for the next batch. I but stuff in glass containers as often as I can and the glass gets recycled. Plastics and paper I can recycle with my weekly trash pick up at home. Food scraps get recycled to my worm box or compost bin. I don't use much in the way of disposable paper products, I use cloth and wash and reuse. About 15 years ago I made cloth shopping bags which reduces the number of grocery bags I use. I do use plastic shopping bags when I clean out the kitty boxes.

So I have 2 stories about when I started recycling.

1. Since I wasn't putting so much garbage in my trashcan, it was taking longer to fill up; instead of a 1 week, it was taking 2-3 weeks or longer. The only things I was putting in my trashcan was biodegradable materials (mainly food). I keep my trashcan underneath my sink and for a few days I just made some easy-to-heat up meals and didn't really have to throw anything away. Well, when I finally did have something to throw away, I opened up the cupboard underneath my sink and a swarm of fruit flies came flying out. I immediately took the trash out, and for the next 3-4 days I sucked up the flies using the attached hose on my vacuum cleaner. I later found out about apple cider vinegar and dish detergent to catch fruit flies, so I'll use that in the future instead of my vacuum cleaner.

2. My first time visiting my local recycling center, I was looking through the bins just to see what things people have recycled just to get an idea of what I can take there. A security guard, I think, approached me and asked what I was doing. I told him; he was fine with that. I then asked if they took glass, and his answer was hilarious.

• Him: "Glass is made out of sand so you can just throw that out and it will turn back into sand."
• Me: "Oh....(me thinking: 'Yeah like in a thousand years!' ) ok."
  I looked it up when I got back home.....it takes a millions years for glass to decompose. hahaha

I don't bicycle. I don't tricycle. I do recycle, and l don't wear a helment when l do. Life in the fast lane. ?

Where I live, the waste management company (the one that operates the garbage trucks on behalf of the city) sorts through the trash to pull out the recyclables. If you own/rent a house, you get a separate bin for recyclables. If you're a business or rent an apartment, there's no separate bin and you let their people sort through the trash to pull that stuff out.

I prefer having my own bin, as I think I can find more of the stuff that can be recycled than people sorting through my trash. That, and I think that after cardboard and paper have been soaking in the stuff in the rest of the trash, it's not likely anyone is going to want to recycle it. But since I'm in an apartment, it's not really an option for me.

There's a recycling center a few blocks away, but they're really limited in what they'll take - so what little plastics and aluminum I can take to them will get there, but storing it up in the meantime is difficult in my very tiny apartment.

I think a more worthwhile pursuit at this point is to put pressure on companies to stop selling goods in non-recyclable packaging. An idea I had was that we might convince the companies to ship all their products to the supermarkets in containers like 55-gallon drums (for stuff like dish soap/laundry detergent, for example.) You could buy re-usable aluminum containers for a few bucks, and the store could have a machine to dispense product into the containers instead of shelving with boxes/bottles. You use the supermarket club card (or equivalent) to operate the machine, so it knows how much of which products you dispensed by the time you get to the register. The containers could have a high deposit/recycle value, so if yours gets damaged, a replacement would cost you little-to-nothing.

With that sort of distribution model, we could cut down on packaging use by about 90% or more, and the manufacturers would save a bundle on getting their products transported to the stores.

It's the law in some states like Connecticut. We have to separate our trash in recyclables and trash.

From Oregon, where ‘everyone’ recycles … my first attempt in the state of Virginia was, only an attempt.. They must have some mighty big dumps around here, or maybe it’s being dumped at sea, but their level of recycling is pathetic!

My adopted VA town & county are cool, though; settled by ‘hippies’ in the early 60’s, they’ve taught many of the natives how to recycle. We’ve custom bins in strategic locations … and the outfit I work for is currently building the coolest one of all! Thanks for asking ~

The city of Tampa has a recyclable pick-up once a week. It takes all forms of pater, metals, glass, and plastic bottles

There is a great center real close to where I live, and they have huge bins for everything.
A lot of people around here use it too. That's nice to see.

I hate to say it but I'm pretty much an environmental terrorist. I need to work on that.

We get a curbside recycling bin from our trash removal company. All types of glasses, metals, plastics, papers, and cardboards are accepted. We also pay a 5 cent deposit on each metal, glass, or plastic beverage container so we save those separately in order to reclaim our deposit. We have 8 people in our household, so we get about $100 in returned deposits every 3 months or so.

Yup. Same as you; used to be they took "mixed household plastics" #s 3-7, but no more--thanks, "market conditions" (sad trombone). Glass goes elsewhere. Aluminum cans are stockpiled for a year or so until there's $20 worth or so and then they go to yet another place.

Bf used to give me shit for rinsing, draining, and crushing aluminum soda cans ("waste" of water and time, grumble grumble)...until I triumphantly reported that the guy at the center gave me an extra 2¢ per lb and a fist bump because he was so impressed with the ease with which my clean, neat cans fell into the hopper.

I grew up sorting and recycling everything: I was a kid when mandated city recycling was implemented in Duluth, MN, and I remember the change. I felt like I went back in time when I moved to MT and found that recycling is optional and either a PITA or costly--instead of a city service.

As much as I can, I try to choose products that have less and/or recyclable packaging.

I've been recycling for years. I've moved several times. It always amazes me that one take this and won't take that and another will do the opposite. If it's recyclable in Cleveland it should be in Houston - right?

Yes, as much as I can

I used to. I care too much about the environment though, so I stopped after I saw this.

Recycling is Bullshit!

In the UK we have an increasing awareness of proper disposal and recycling. We have black bag (Seagull proof for those of us on the coast) or black wheelie bins for general waste collected every two weeks, green bags (seagull proof) or green wheelie bins for recyclables collected every other week, a blue bag (seagull proof) or insert for the wheelie for cardboard collected on recycling day and a food waste bin collected every week.

I've really got into recycling and reusing. It's almost like my OCD gene (only a small one) has plonked itself in my reuse thought processing and it's now becoming a challenge to resue as much as I can.

I'm part of a community gardening project that makes small wooden garden ornaments out of recycled wood like old pallets, we now recycle the recycled so that we'll modify something to sell if it hasn't sold before. e.g squirrel feeders don't sell all that well so we'll modify them into bird boxes and bug boxes which do better.

My town has a pretty good recycling program. Every residence has a recycling bin that you can fill up with paper, plastic, metal, and glass. You put it out on your curb once a week and they'll come by to pick it up. It all gets sorted out in the recycling facility.

It's responsible to recycle--good for you

I should mention too that when I was married, the wife and I had some pet rabbits. After years of just throwing out their "waste" along with their straw bedding, uneaten hay and other food scraps, I decided to start a compost pile in the garden. That pile got almost as tall as me by the next spring. However I never got to use it as it was around that same time the wife decided she wanted a divorce so I had to move out.

I'm not sure what the laws for recycling are here, but obviously it must not be mandatory (at least for apartment buildings) as my apartment complex doesn't offer recycling containers, only trash containers. Apparently either the complex owners decided it was too expensive to have recyclables hauled away, or the Waste Management people said it wasn't worth it to pick up. There's another apartment complex nearby, however, that does have a separate dumpster for recyclables, so every so often I bag up mine and drop them off there. Before that, I would take them to my friend's house the night before his "trash day" and drop them off at his curb. I used to take in my aluminum soda cans, but the price for aluminum is so low these days that now I just take them to a drop-off for the local humane society. I also take my plastic shopping bags to Wal-Mart every so often and drop them off in one of their bag bins.

It's pretty much mandatory in NY. We have regular trash bins and then a recyclable bin. Pretty simple. No separating really. NY Sanitation Department picks it up once a week and twice a week for regular trash.

I do, but apparently China has reduced what recycle materials they’ll buy.