Rolling My Wheels Around My Fort Worth Neighborhood Remembering Getting Scolded For Not Recycling

This beautiful first Thursday of November, with its return of blue sky, lifted me from the doldrums of Seasonally Affected Disorder (SAD) and had me rolling my wheels around my neighborhood.

Those are my handlebars parked in front of a Recycle Bin looking at my neighborhood golf course.

Do other towns put something like "Fort Worth Recycles" on their Recycle Bins?

Washington started recycling way back in the last century. I don't remember my Mount Vernon Recycle Bins having "Mount Vernon Recycles" printed on them.

When I moved to Texas I quickly unlearned the recycling habit, with all garbage going into the same garbage can. Or out the window. (joking)

I recollect about a year after moving to Texas being back up in Washington, staying in Seattle, putting an empty bottle in the regular garbage can and getting told by the woman of the house, in a severe scolding tone, "You forget, we recycle here."

I remember getting multiple repetitive recycled recycling scoldings. I have not seen that scolding Seattle woman in years....

A Walkabout In My Neighborhood Finds A Stuffed Recycle Bin Plus A Water Leak & Wildflowers

This 2nd Sunday of the 11th month of November I decided to forego my regularly scheduled drive to a hiking, biking or walking location to instead take one of my irregularly scheduled tours of my neighborhood.

A couple months ago the big Recycle Bin you see in the picture appeared at the Havenwood apartment complex on Boca Raton Boulevard.

Multiple times since this Recycle Bin appeared I have noticed it being filled to the bursting point.

In addition to being a littering eyesore this would seem to defeat the purpose of having a Recycle Bin.

I know several people who live in the Havenwood Apartment complex. This complex is on both sides of Boca Raton Boulevard, with a couple hundred units. The above is the one and only Recycle Bin, requiring quite an effort for many of the residents to get to the recycling location.

And now, today, one of the tenants, who I talked to whilst doing my picture taking, told me that the residents are being charged $1.95 a month for the privilege of recycling, which they are currently prevented from doing due to the Recycle Bin not being able to accept Recyclables.

Continuing on with my tour of my neighborhood I walked towards Albertsons.

I know here in North Texas we have no shortage of water, so leaks are no big deal.

Apparently.

The above leak has been leaking for weeks, maybe months. One loses track of time. This watery view is looking east on the aforementioned Boca Raton Boulevard. Albertsons is to the right, with the newly relocated Italy Pasta & Pizza restaurant straight ahead, with its Grand Opening balloon sitting on its roof.

The leak is leaking in copious amounts, at what appeared to be the rate of water leaking being at the level of a kitchen faucet wide open. This likely amounts to quite a few gallons of water down the drain per hour, per day, per month.

Not everything I saw on my neighborhood walk today was disturbing. There was nothing disturbing about the patch of orange wildflowers I walked by soon after leaving the stuffed Recycle Bin. Maybe Fort Worth's renowned horticulturist, CatsPaw, can identify this colorful  beauty....

Recycling in Washington Ordeals

We recycle in Washington. I get reminded of this over and over and over again every time I'm back here, after committing some massive recycling faux pas.

Yesterday I put an empty milk carton in the regular garbage. This got me 5 Bad Recycler Demerits. This morning I emptied a peanut butter jar and put it in the regular garbage. 5 more Demerits.

It's all so confusing. Way more so than when I lived here. Then there was just one bin for newspapers and one bin for plastics and glass and one bin for normal garbage.

I'm not sure I'm all that clear on it yet, even after 10 days of trying to keep it all straight. Near as I can tell there is one big container for paper products, like newspapers and magazines. Another big container for yard waste, like grass clippings that could just stay on the grass after being clipped. That would seem a good recycling plan for grass. Then there is a big bin for bottles. I am not sure if the plastic bottles are separated from the glass ones or not.

I do know that my sister thoroughly examined the glass bin to make sure there were no illegal substances in there. Like used wine bottles.

I have been accused, at least twice, of putting bad stuff in the regular garbage. Apparently if you put a bottle in the regular garbage you can be arrested, fined and forced to do garbage pickup duty in parks and freeway medians.

The various bins get picked up on various days. This makes it even more confusing.

One strange thing is the regular garbage can is by far the smallest of all the bins. And it sits out in the alley where it gets picked up. The recycled stuff goes out on the street where it must be properly located in a correct position so it can be picked up by the auto-recycle bin picker upper thing. It's quite a feat of engineering.

In grocery stores you get asked that paper or plastic question and are greeted with scornful looks if you say you don't care.

There is a lot of eco-friendly packaging here. And novel ways to skip putting something in a bag. Like today at Target my sister bought something in a big box. The cashier attached some sort of tape thing to the box that functioned as a handle. It seemed very clever. But I had concerns about the use of plastic to make the handle.

Texas for the most part has a much simpler recycling method. The litter just gets tossed so that Mother Nature can use wind to recycle it to a new location.

Enough whining about recycling. Don't get me started on the ban here on talking on the cell phone while driving. It is just all to much to have to remember.