After a couple of weeks, I realized how slow we are to change. My parental units and I are so clueless that we have been throwing away money, literally! These are in the form of recyclable materials that we would use, such as egg cartons, oil jugs, drinking containers (i.e. water bottles) and plastic bags (from the grocery stores)!
We learned one morning while eating breakfast at McDonald’s restaurant from ‘Carlos’, one parishioner, that there is a small recycle station on a parking lot nearby a gasoline station. So ‘Paw’ and I decided to haul some plastic bag full of recyclables, which included aluminum cans ‘Paw’ would crush underneath the feet. We got around $14.00 that day.
Afterwards, I’ve been ‘cross-training’ myself on looking for those recycling symbols (three clockwise arrows forming a triangle with recycling numbers ranging from 1 to 7). The McDonald’s coffee cup, its lid and the little, half-and-half milk container are made out of ‘polystyrene’ (or recycling number 6 found inside a triangle of three clockwise arrows).
Some numbers are not inside triangles but have barely legible printing, such as the letter ‘PS’ and ‘6’ closely togther. Anything that feels like plastic should be closely scrutinized for any faint description of recycling number. I almost missed the ‘triangle 6’ on the bottom of a plastic tray, which contained my ‘Chips Ahoy! – Chunky Chocolate’.
I got mad at ‘Paw’ again for not cooperating as he is slowly becoming an old timer that I’ve been ranting about in blogs as seen on television and in nursing homes (where my paternal grandmother was put by three of her children and that in-law, ‘Orge’). I was loud as usual but resigned to creating new plastic bags, labeled with the recycling number for my convenience; since ‘Paw’ wanted to combine all the recycling numbers together.
However, the big ‘Mexican’ guy of the small, ‘mobile’ recycling station said that these numbers from 1-7 should be separated out because the prices for each one differs. The most common numbers we have so far are 1, 2, 5 and 6. I have some household items with recycle number 3, such as lotions and containers for hydrogen peroxide, dishwashing liquids, liquid bleach and liquid softener.
We normally rinse these containers with water and sometimes I find myself soaping and drying these so the storage of my hard work outdoors won’t be overrun by ants or other curious and hungry critters in search of left over tidbits stuck on my recyclables. We keep the lids to the main recyclable container (i.e. water bottles) but I always make sure these have the recyclable numbers pre-printed somewhere on the lids.
‘Maw’ told me of someone who actually bought a new car using the cash he got from collecting recyclables from the parks, streets and probably from neighbors’ garbage, like some woman who was waiting in her car one day to go through ours. I told her I wanted to dig around the McDonald trash bins and ask the other people nearby for their coffee cups. This is money in the making.
I even told ‘Paw’ about my idea of opening up recycling centers in the Philippines. I went on to describe how I could help the children after they came with their bags of recyclables from the land fills by having them wash their hands and feet and sitting them down to my long table of food and water. As usual, my ‘Paw’ has a habit showing his frown face of an obvious upside down smile and saying flatly, ‘No’.
So I learned the meanings of each recycling numbers found on the following Wikipedia article: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code]. The other recyclables are tossed into our local container for later sorting by the city.
I hope to earn my measly money this way and joked to ‘Maw’ about how I could disguise myself as a homeless person with a shopping cart just so I could go rummaging through the public trashcans for recyclables.
I really could use a new car because my 1998 Ford Mustang needs a new transmission. The downshift from 60mph to even 50mph is harsh and I’ve no money, thanks to TPTB! Y’all know who you are! You promised!
Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.
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