DO you have one big bins for everything you recycle? Or do you separate out each type of recycling in well-organized and tidy bins?

Where do you keep your recycling bins? In the kitchen, laundry room, garage, outside?

Well, they will have to be separate when you take it in to the recycling place. A lot of people stomp on the cans to flatten them out so you can fit more in a bag. Or there's a thing you can buy that does that.

I do not have room to really recycle. I live in an apartment. The info I have is from the friends who do it for a living. I do try to save a few things for them, such as electric cords and sometimes aluminum cans.

The brass I was talking about, I DO recycle. I accumulate brass candle sticks, lamp bases, little boxes, and etc, instead of selling them at yard sales. I usually get more money that way!

That is so great Tweetymom, that you save items for your friends to recycle. maybe I can bring this up with my friends and family.

I found a brass figurine i no longer want that I will try to sell. I called the recycler and they offer $1. 23 a pound for brass!

All this means, of course, is that i need to seriously take a long look at how to organize my recycling area indoors so it's totally used and less of an eyesore.

Suggestions?

We have a closet by the bathroom. We bought a vertical bin holder with 4 bins in it. The top two are for glass - plastic - metal because our trash / recycling company takes them all in one bin. They separate it out on their end. The bottom two are for paper / cardboard.

I also have a paper recycle bin beneath my desk for any paper I get.

I actively try to cancel every catalog we are sent so we cut down on the waste paper.

I admit I still get credit card statements / bills in paper form, I have been paranoid up until now about not having those in physical form. But now that I have a receipt scanner and am getting rid of all our receipts, I think I am ready to take the step to keep my bill receipts on my computer in PDF form. I just have to make even more sure that I back up my system regularly.

That sounds like a good system, Lisa. Is this a kind of Ikea bin, or something you'd see at Target? Is it plastic?

Tweetymom, I found another brass box and added it to my brass/copper bin.

What I have going right now is a line of round buckets in the kitchen area. I have a trash bin that I try to not put things into. I have a covered compost bucket near the trash bin.

Then close by there are these:
- the glass and plastic redemption bucket
- the paper recycling bucket
- the mixed recyclables bucket (whatever doesn't fall into any other category)
- the GoodWill Donations Bucket
- a small glass jar I toss my found golf balls into that I keep in the livingroom. When that is full I will recycle those too.

Then outside under the porch I have a small container for my brass, steel and copper findings, and several HUGE bins for aluminum cans. I have about five or six large overflowing bins of cans, waiting for me to drive over the hill and deal with.

I also have the compost pile in the backyard behind the shed.

It's Rubbermaid I think, fairly cheap but reasonably sturdy. Yes definitely plastic and washable.

We put all our donations upstairs in the "music room" because they only come every month or so - we get quite a pile up there by then.

We do have a compost circle but it's back at the far end of the back yard so it's a haul to go out there when it's a tundra out there

Lisa, can you start a compost that is closer to your house? Not much good if you can't really use it. lol

I just added a clear vase to the livingroom to drop my corks into. It's something I like to do - I save the corks until the vase is full. Then i put them in a baggie to bring to thrift stores. They sell them in their 'craft' sections.

We do try to drink the decent boxed wines to make even less waste, but end up with bottled wine often. So this is one less thing to make trash and be re-used.

One sided paper gets tossed into a plastic shelf thing under my printer, so that gets used as much as possible before being recycled.

I also have a gigantic stack of books to sell on Amazon in my office area. The really tattered novels will go to the RV libraries, but i have to set aside time to weed them out and place in the RV. The books are just piled along the wall. Not very organized, eh?

Hey, you're making progress and progress is always good!

It gets really cold in the winter so I don't know that anywhere would be tempting for me to leave the house and go put tea bags into for example. I think I'd need a staging area in the house, and that would get smelly. I'll have to ponder this some. I really want to do something with these tea bags. It seems so wasteful to toss them into a trash bag.

Oh, i thought you knew how this works! Sorry, yes, there is always a staging spot in a kitchen if you are a composter. You will need something that seals. You can have a small kitchen container on the counter, or a larger one on the floor, depending on how much food scrap you produce.

Coffee grounds and filters go in there too. And egg shells. No meat.

Jeanne always tossed things immediately out her back window, I think, and she was the one I always thought about for composting I think she must have had something right beneath her kitchen window.

LOL, I remember her saying that. Nice situation if you can swing it.

So far this is all working out very well. Even if my compost is mostly coffee grounds!

I am almost at the point where I will be dumping this first load into the outdoor compost area. I need some chicken wire to loop into a circle. I bet i can find some while walking around.

Yes I'm sure you can come across a free composting system without too much effort!

Bob is agreeing with this composting idea. So we just have to set up a location in the kitchen to store the "transitional items" before we get them into the back yard. He wants to use a solid tupperware container. I would rather have a flip-up-lid thing. I would be very likely to use something that I flip up the lid, toss something in, and close it before I can smell it. I have horror images in my mind of trying to pry open a Tupperware thing and having really nasty smells come out while I put things in and reseal it. I don't even like to open bad stuff in the fridge, so they sit there and get worse.

Mine is not unlike this one:
kitchen organic waste bin

This is the one I really want, where you can drain off compost tea to use in houseplants:
Indoor kitchen composter

That looks great, the one you want, I'll talk with Bob about that!

Thank you!

If I had a stable place, what I really want to do is set up a worm bin. Those are tons of fun - the worms live in a small bin under your kitchen sink and eat up your wastes, turning them quickly into nutritious worm tea and potting soil.

OK here's the recycling bin in the closet by the kitchen -



The top two bins are for plastics / glass. The bottom two are for paper / cardboard. I have a paper bin beneath my desk which gets filled up quickly, and then we put bigger cardboard boxes in the basement until it's pick-up time.

That looks reasonably organized. Good job!

is that your extra tea stored on top there?

in my new place I have this lean-to shed I am using to organize my recycling. It's not organized properly yet, since it's too hot to work outside. But at least it's a start! I love it.

At this point i have a random assortment of smallish bins under the lean to - it's doesn't look as pretty and organized as it does in my dreams. All of the plastic tubs i was using previously are now storing rainwater.

I have been drooling over some nice pre-made recycle bins, but don't feel right buying them, since 1. they cost money and 2. they are not either used or made of recycled materials. 3. and it would not even be buying locally, which would at least make me feel better.

So i am toying around with the idea of making some bins made of used pallets.

I now have different things going on. I have two stacks of tires set up as compost bins - they work excellently, being black/heat absorbent. Plus they were free and I could keep them out of the landfills. I can't wait to add worms to them.

I am going to write up how to use tires as worm bins and will let you all know once that is up. So this will be documented in case people are curious about it.

I have been using drawers from old furniture as bins now for my recycling sorting. That is working pretty well, and they are free things that are easy to find once you start looking for old furniture people are throwing away.