Hey West - we are in the same boat. but what about the colored paper, the glossy paper, etc. like magazines etc??? There is no place around here that will take that stuff either. I have been shredding the smaller glossy stuff (that comes in the mail) to mix into the compost pile but I can't take the time to tear apart and shred magazines. It either goes into the garbage or sometimes hubby sneaks it in with the newspapers that we take up to the recycling center or sometimes I wait till hubby's at work and I burn them. None of these is a good alternative really. Wish the recycling programs were better in my area. Dulu - in our last place (different town) we had a similar thing as you. Fortunately, we have a single sort system that allows for all manner of paper types/magazines, cans, bottles, and plastics #1 thru 7 to be dumped together in one large wheeled bin and picked up every two weeks. The only difference was that you could not put in magazines or cardboard and they only took plastics 1 and 2. Yours sounds much more comprehensive. Val

Which is "better" can vary from time to time. Using newspaper and/or cardboard in the garden instead of recycling would be a better use at certain times when there is a glut of paper to recycle and most is sitting in large piles not being used in any other way. It is a common myth that recycling paper saves trees when in reality the paper industry is using tree farms today, places where trees are grown as a cash crop, and has been doing that for years. Back in the 1970's many people tried to sell paper made from only recycled fiber and people would not buy it because it was not the clean, bright white they were used to and still today few people buy paper made from 100 percent recycled fiber. It takes much more energy to burn your kitchen waste that it would produce, and unless you municipal incnerator is being used to generate electricity it is using too much enegy and should be shut down. Everything that you can keep out of any landfill is good, since the only thing landfills do is contribute to ground water pollution.

I don't make a point of adding paper to the compost as I don't need to, got plenty of leaves for browns. I do use cardboard and newspaper as mulch as they're very useful for that, one of the best materials in my opinion, plentiful, cheap if not free, biodegradable. Recycling paper is better than chopping down trees for virgin pulp. Here in the US, most paper pulp comes from timber that is not harvested for sustainability. Actually I think a lot of our paper pulp comes from western Canada, where timber operators still act as if the western forests are inexhaustible and you can just keep moving on to uncut forests rather than going to the expense and bother of harvesting sustainably. Turning trees into paper takes a lot of chemicals and a lot of water and a lot of electricity. Turning paper into paper takes less of everything. But, your nice bright white new paper can't be made from more than a very small percentage of recycled paper, and usually it has only factory waste for recycled content, not post-consumer pulp. Recycled paper with any significant percentage of post-consumer fiber in it isn't going to be the higher quality stuff, but has a different feel to it, and a dingier color and lower brightness. Still perfectly good, but for important letters and resumes I use the clean stuff! So, I prefer to recycle my paper, except when I have a project coming up that needs sheets of cardboard or newspaper for mulching or insulating. But if your compost pile needs the paper, go ahead and use it. If you don't really need the paper, leave it in the recycling bins, unless you know it's being dumped.

Yes Kat, those are them! (thanks Jasdip!). Those are from a store called Zehrs or The Great Canadian Superstore (same owner). There are other bins from other stores as well that I have seen. I have a black one from Food Basics around here somewhere - probably holding toys downstairs LOL. They have straps (two lengths on mine, actually), and also molded handles in the sides. The carts at that store or gianormous and shaped differently, they can hold one bin on a top level, two on the lower level, and one more underneath at the front. I used to try and keep one bin empty, with the idea that I can drop my filled bins on the conveyor, and the cashier could ring the items from one bin and drop them in the empty, and so on. Seemed very efficient to me. However, the cashiers were getting repetitive strain injury from doing that so now they ask that you remove the items from the bin and place on the belt. Of course, we have to pack our own items down at the other end. The bins nest nicely, and I find they stay cleaner than the bags do. I also find the bags tend to tip over in the car, whereas the bins do not. Dances.