Holding on to recyclables? Yes!

I've held on to a bunch of recyclables over the last three years, primarily because I knew that these items could be recycled, but my local municipality didn't take them. And sometimes I wondered if I was crazy--after all, these items added to the junk in my house. Now, however, I think it was worth it.

One set of stuff included #5 plastics and Brita filters, which Preserve, a company that makes razors, toothbrushes and tableware from recycled plastic, accepts back through their Gimme 5 program. You can drop off items for recycling at Whole Foods, but the nearest one for me is Seattle, an hour away. Or you can mail them a box of plastics to recycle, which I did about a year ago. It cost me more than $40, which is just too big a chunk out of my pocketbook. Since that time I've been holding on to my yogurt and Smart Balance tubs and filters, hoping for a windfall.

I received it--but not monetarily. As we prepared to move, someone told us that we could drop items off at the Tacoma landfill, even though we don't live in city itself. There's a fee per each 100 lbs of garbage, but recycling is free. The recycling center at the landfill is amazing; they accept much, much more than my local municipality. I recycled all our number #5 plastics, leaving only the Brita filters. I was able to mail the latter to Preserve for a much more reasonable $9.

A second set of stuff was old shoes. In Boston, I was able to easily drop off old sneakers (which are recycled to make playground materials) at City Sports and the New Balance store. When I moved to Tacoma, I googled "sneaker recycling" and learned (at least according to the Google results) that the nearest place was the Nike factory in Seattle. Again, it doesn't make sense to travel an hour just to recycle.

But last week, I had a meeting at the REI store in Seattle, and I decided to call and ask if they accept shoes for recycling. They do--so I brought the old shoes with me. There is also an REI store in Tacoma, but since I've never shopped there, it hadn't occurred to me to ask. So now I know I have a place to recycle shoes in Tacoma, too!