Recycle & Chili

My friend Carla organized a recycling event that was held today for the neighborhood. This community event was sponsored by the Hawk Nest Time Bank. So this morning some of us Time Bankers set off to collect neighbor's cardboard and boxboard for our recycling event. In East Lansing there is curb side recycling with trash pickup weekly. However, the curbside recycling just picks up things like plastic bottles, clear glass, tin cans, newspapers, mixed paper, and magazines. For our event, if interested, neighbors could leave out cardboard and boxboard in their driveway. We would go around and collect it and take it to the recycle center for them.

There were five of us that went around and collected the recycling materials. First we met at Carla's house to discuss our "plan." As we headed over to Carla's house we noticed the houses that we passed on the way didn't have very much to collect. So since it was before the starting time we told neighbors we'd be around, we sat and chatted for a few before we headed out. We were talking about our chili potluck to follow the event so Carla had to show off the recycled bowls she bought for the chili. Go Carla!


A little after 9am we headed out and split up our collection by phases in the neighborhood. Two went around phase one, two around phase two, and I took phase three. I didn't mind going by myself since phase three has the fewest houses so I figured I could handle it. We didn't have as much participation as we were hoping for, but for the first time I guess the 20 houses we collected from wasn't bad. I ended up only having four houses in phase three to collect from, mine included. I had been building a pile over the past couple weeks to "donate" to the event. My pile alone filled half of the back of my car. I'm giving my friend Dawn the award for the most cardboard donation because she had quite the stack out there in her driveway. Take a look.

Here's what I collected from the four houses.

Here's one of the loads Nico and Dave collected!

Here's Nico "hauling" the cardboard to the recycle bin!

Back at Nico and Susan's for the delicious chili!

Thanks to all those who participated in putting out the recycle material! Hopefully we'll get more next time. Thanks to Carla for organizing this great community event! Thanks to Nico and Susan for opening their home to all those who wanted to come for chili! It was nice to have some hot chili on this cold day and socialize with friends/neighbors. I'll post my chili recipe tomorrow for the chili I made for our potluck. If you don't recycle you really should. It's not that hard to do and it's a great way to help the environment. Go Green!