Our new town has a very extensive recycling program. It’s quite brilliant. We moved from the city of Chicago which has the failed attempt at recycling – blue bags – where you put recyclables into “blue” bags and in with the regular trash. We did it, but were very suspicious that it was ever sorted.

Now, we are recycling fools. Our trash/recycling day is Thursday.

In our new house, we get charged for each trash can we fill with garbage, but recycling is FREE – no matter how much recycling you have. You could have a whole yard full of recycling and they would take it. And I’m reassured to see that different trucks pick up the different types of recycling and trash – it’s not all going on the same truck to the landfill.

The only trouble is that we don’t really know yet what’s recyclable and what’s not. Every single thing we throw away, it seems like, we look at each other and ask the inevitable question “Does this get recycled?” We’re still learning. If you put something in the recycling bin that is not recyclable, the people take it out of the bin and throw it on your lawn.

Some Thursday evenings, our lawn has a lot of non-recycled items on it.