I don't compare myself to my neighbors. That way lies madness. I do what _I_ can and that's that. My city contracts with the corporation Waste Management. WM provides the Big Green Can for trash and two regular recycling bins per household, one for paper and one for metal/glass/plastic with the option of buying more recycling bins for $5 each (we have one extra). WM won't accept very much plastic for recycling - for instance, they only take #1 and #2 plastics, but probably 75% of the plastic that comes into the house is neither of those types. Grrrr. They only take certain kinds of glass, too. Batteries are not accepted for recycling - ni-cads and lithium batteries have to be taken to dropboxes at most hardware stores, alkalines in the regular trash. We do not compost and I refuse to tear myself up about it. We do not garden, nor do our neighbors, and discarding food scraps outside attracts vermin we neither need nor want near the house. WM has no composting program, either with curbside pickup or dropoff at the transfer station. However, even if they did it as a dropoff option, the landfill/transfer station is almost half an hour's drive from my home and nowhere near anything else for sensibly combining trips, and from an overall environmental POV I think it's pretty stupid to drive nearly an hour round-trip to drop off a couple of bags of carrot ends and potato peels. I use the tote bags for groceries about 80-90% of the time (and I don't stress about using one store's bags at another store, the baggers can make all the faces they want but until they start giving the reusable bags away for free they'll use whatever bags I hand them to pack) but we use the regular plastic grocery bags for so many purposes that I don't castigate myself for forgetting. BTW, plastic shopping bags are usually #2 plastic and can go right into the recycling bin - stuff a bunch into one bag and knot it so they don't go fluttering away when the bin is dumped. The dog-poop pickup bags we use are compostable or rapidly biodegradable with exposure to moisture even in anaerobic conditions (like a landfill). And when they say "rapidly" they mean it - we tested them ourselves in the back yard. They're a bit on the pricey side but we consider it worth it. The "doggie dooleys" are a big PITA and useless half the year here anyway. The local Goodwill started accepting dead computers (I guess they make money somehow on parting them out?) earlier this year and I took over a station-wagon-load accumulated amongst my social circle, but it's very difficult to get rid of any other electronics here. Our city has one hazmat disposal day a year, for four hours on a Saturday, and if you miss it, too bad so sad, you have to figure out how to store it until next year's disposal day. Crazymaking. One of the local pack-and-ships will take styrofoam peanuts and airpacks but will not accept any kind of formed styrofoam (which is also unrecyclable here, so all you can really do is bust it up and either try to reuse it or cram it in a trash bag and fit it into the Big Green Can). We donate and Freecycle and regift and put things out on the curb with "free" signs on them. The trash can is the last resort for things that cannot be discarded another way with a reasonable level of effort.

Two sinks here. Echoing the advice from Buehl about locating recycling bin nearer to prep zone. Our cabs man had put it next to cleanup sink in his plan but I moved it. He was puzzled. But I knew that empty milk, wine, and beer bottles were generated at the eating table (not at the cleanup area) and that after observation of my own cooking behaviors, I had already decided that a canopener was going to live in the prep sink area, but none in the cleanup area, because that's where I open cans. I can rinse out empty yogurt, etc containers at prep sink before tossing into bin. I still haven't solved the problem of old newspapers, flattened cartons, etc. within the recycle bin--I shove them down alongside the paper bag that holds the rest of recycling stuff within the plastic bin. When this loose big wad begins to overwhelm, I move it to a bin in garage. By the way, there's a rolling boot to hold the Ikea bin mentioned above--two bins actually. I planned to put a small wastebasket under the cleanup sink, but 6 months after the install of cabs, I haven't done it yet and the walk 6.5 feet to the double pullout bin with both waste and odd recycle items isn't that daunting. Compost, on the other hand, is generated and stored at both sinks.

We pay a small fee with our local council rates for rubbish pick up, it's not optional unless you live out on a farm, and it's the same whether you put rubbish out weekly, fortnightly or monthly so no advantage to only doing it when the bin is full. They provide large plastic bins with wheels and flip lids which are placed on the edge of the kerb so the rubbish truck can pick it up with a mechanical arm and tip the rubbish out into the truck before replacing the bin on the kerb. One bin is for rubbish and the other with a different coloured lid is for recyclable cardboard, certain plastics and glass jars. The recyclables are collected twice monthly. Disposals are completely unknown here but until recently sewers were also unknown, everyone had soak wells and leach drains. I doubt disposals will catch on. If you lose your bin you have to pay for another. One Christmas because Christmas Day was our normal collection day it was cancelled, and our bin was rather full. Impatient DH couldn't wait a couple of days for the special pick up so he took the full bin to the tip and emptied it himself. A couple of days later I went to take out the trash and couldn't find the bin, so I called DH at work. "Honey, when you brought back the bin the other day, where did you put it?" Silence. Then, "Uh, I don't think I brought it back." I went to the tip to check but someone else had souvenired it as they are handy for storing chicken and horse feed in. So we had to shell out for a new bin, all because DH was so impatient!

And stonetech, while I'm fairly cynical about things touted as green, and don't expect all recycling is collected and reused in an ideal manner (local recycler's fine print reads that they may "reject" -- ie dump -- any loads that are not acceptable at their discretion), I do think the effort is worth it. All local trash is incinerated, so even if only some is diverted, recycling has a chance to be the better option here. Arguments about the costs of such services, about what's greenwashing, about consumerism in general, about the global commodities markets and the economics of the waste business... all are topics worth thinking about, but that may be beyond the scope of this forum...