Am I recycling 110% ?

Yesterday, Central Mayor Mac Martin made an interesting comment:

"How much does any one person recycle? The only way to know for sure is to throw all of your trash on the floor, separate it, and count it. Compare the quantity of recyclable material to non recyclable material. Then the question becomes this. Do you count volume or weight? If you recycle an empty gallon milk jug and at the same time throw into the garbage a gallon of rotten potato salad, have you recycled 50% (by volume) or less than 1% (by weight). Can you recycle (compost) the potato salad? "

This struck me as a great way of explaining this issue.

20% for one person may be 40% for another.

Let me clarify what he said,

Take 100% of your trash and throw in on the floor.

Separate it out into recyclables and "definitive" trash.

For comparison's sake, let's say you find 20% recyclables.

If you recycle that 20% - you have recycled 100%.

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Now say your 20% was all aluminum cans.

Now say, you take those cans to C&S recycling in Norris to sell them.

Or, say you took your aluminum cans directly to the Pickens County recycle center.

Even though you have recycled 100% of what you could recycle, according to the County, you have recycled 0%, you are a degenerate who doesn't care for the environment, you don't care for the cleanliness of Pickens County, and you don't care that the County is trying to make an effort to recycle. Therefore, FINE!

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Now, Mayor Martin also pointed out ... "What is recyclable?"

What I consider recyclable, may not be recyclable to others?

My family recycles, by weight, nearly 70% of our trash. We compost, we recycle printer cartridges, we donate, we reuse, we repurpose, we burn, we turn in cans - yet to the county we recycle around 10% of our trash. We don't use a lot of plastic containers (we reuse the few we bought months ago and every now and then "renew" them). We also tend to buy larger "bulk type" items which contributes to our lower use of recyclable plastic.

My family doesn't use a lot of glass either for pretty much the same reasons.

My wife brings home her coffee grounds and tea bags from her job in Pickens - this amounts to 5 pounds a week. Or, 22.5 pounds per month that aren't going in the trash. I pick up plastic and glass from the side of the road to clean up all around Liberty. I bring plastic bottles from work to recycle at my curb. Shouldn't that count? Or maybe even count extra?

I essentially recycle 110%!

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I'm not one to propose a problem without a solution.

So, how do I propose to fix this issue of "recyclable accounting"?

I propose that the County have a form that "certain residents" (such as myself) can make declarations of recycling. This form would have to be filled out and delivered to the County Administration Building - therefore somewhat preventing fraud because there would have to be some effort.