Sharing Good Ideas

I love reading environmental stuff (mostly-- some of it is kind of depressing), especially the memoir-ish, "here's-how-I-do-it-if-you-want-to-try" type. That's more or less what I'm trying to do with my Green Living posts on Fridays, although I realise that sometimes it's more miss than hit.

So this week I'm reading Happy-Go-Local, by Linsly Donnelly. I wish I could remember who recommended it to me, so I could tell you, but my memory is indeed slippy. Anyway, Ms. Donnelly is a mum who decided to go environmental for the sake of passing on a clean Earth to her children (one of the best reasons for going green, IMO), and then wrote a book about it to help other mums navigate the murky waters of local, organic, and other scary enviro-crazy words. What's also great about this book is the progression from easy to hard in her suggestions and ideas. I'm not done with it yet, so I can't give it a wholehearted recommendation, but so far, so good.

But, I want to share a suggestion from early in the book. I've pointed to Earth 911 before as a good source to find recycling centres near you, especially for hard-to-recycle things like batteries. Plus, it's just one of my favourite websites. Ms. Donnelly takes it one step further, recognising that busy parents (or anyone else) don't want to run to the hazardous waste site every time a light bulb burns out. She recommends putting a bin on each floor of the house-- in a closet, bathroom, or wherever-- for those small items like batteries that shouldn't go into the regular trash but also aren't worth a trip across town in and of themselves. I would just add CFLs should be wrapped carefully or kept in a smaller box inside the bin so there isn't a mercury-containing mess when your six-year-old slam-dunks a battery on top of last week's burned-out bulb. Then, once there is a full bin of small items (or you have a larger item that justifies a trip), there is only one journey to be made to the hazardous waste site. Brilliant.

Do you recycle batteries and other difficult-to-recycle items? Do you have a system that works for you?