1 point for me

I grew up recycling. All of my parents supported it, as far as I can remember; if they didn't actively encourage it, they certainly didn't have anything against it. My father and stepmother not only recycled things like paper, plastic, and glass, they went as far as to have a compost pile in the back yard. Inedible parts of vegetables and other food products were thrown into the compost container (my least favourite part of helping with dinner), and all eventually ended up as fertilizer. My mother would take me out to find cans in the desert to recycle; I could turn them in to the local recycling drop-off for money, depending on how much my stash weighed. So every once in a while my mother would drive me around in our little blue Volkswagen Rabbit at about 5 mph. I would open the door, sit as close to the edge as possible without my mother scolding me for being unsafe, and stare intenly at the ground as it passed, hoping for a glint of sun off of a soda can, or the ugly sight of a brown beer bottle littering the ground. I'm sure my mother spent much more on gas driving around than I earned with my recyclables, but she didn't worry with that. She did it for me; to teach me valuable lessons about doing our part to take care of the earth, and about the value of a dollar. It's not easy to teach those two lessons in one activity.

While I lived in Utah, I didn't recycle. I couldn't find a good spot in my apartment for an extra bin, nor did I want to argue with my roommates over the lost space or the extra effort they would have to spend remembering to throw their plastic bottles into the right bin instead of the left one. In addition, I had no car with which I could haul the paper, plastic, and glass to the nearest recycling center. So I did what everyone else in the area did and threw everything away, piling up trash bags on the outside of the huge dumpster provided by my apartment complex if necessary. Waste, waste, waste.

But since moving to Maryland - more specifically, since being hired by REI, a very environmentally-conscious company - I have remembered that I myself am environmentally conscious. Most of the time. I decided this morning to start recycling once again, and went to the store immediately (well, within 30 minutes) to buy a second plast trash can for recyclable items. I even inserted a cardboard divider into it to sort out the paper from the plastic containers and metal cans. Taped on the outside is a list of exactly what the local recycling center takes, in case I forget. Already my bin is half full of recyclables I found around the house or dug out of the trash can (I'm very thorough when it comes to things like this) and I can't wait to take my first trip to empty it.

It's things like this that make me feel good about myself, and life in general - the world is made a little bit better because of the pains I'm taking. Trees will be saved, air pollution will increase slightly less than it would have, and I'm sure that, indirectly due to my efforts to preserve the environment, starving children in Africa will be fed.

1 point for me.