With my husband hunting for a new job, suddenly our printer is going through ink. We’ve been low for a long time, but we finally managed to use up a couple cartridges.

Come to find out that a lot of Canon ink cartridges aren’t recycleable. Some are, but not the ones we use.

I gather that the ones Office Depot recycles have to have the print head in them. I guess that’s something of a plus, that disposing of my cartridges is not disposing of a print head every time. But I still hate seeing the plastic go to waste.

I even checked an ink refill site, and no go there either. Not that it would have helped this time, since we needed the ink today. But it would be nice to know.

All this is making me really glad we don’t do a lot of printing most of the time. I find it simpler to order my prints on those rare occasions I need a photo printed, so my printing needs come out to pretty rare occasions. The printer is only about 2 years old, so we obviously have no plans to replace it just because the cartridges won’t recycle. But it’s a thought for next time.

Technorati Tags: ink cartridge recycling, printing, printer

Perhaps not around the home, but recycling consistently can be really, really hard to do for a lot of people.

Just think about it. When you’re out and about, and need to dispose of something that you would recycle at home, how often is there a bin for it? In some areas that’s pretty unusual.

I know in my area things are good in some places. I sometimes see parks with bins for recycling glass or plastic bottles. Recycling bins for paper are less common, but considering that a lot of people have trouble keeping trash out of the other recycling bins, that makes a bit of sense to me. The criteria for recycleable paper can be stricter, so I kind of get it.

While I work at home, I also understand that you’re lucky if a business does more than paper.

One of the key things I do is try to avoid having to recycle when I’m out and about. If I can plan ahead, reusable makes much more sense than recyclable. In most situations I’d have to carry the item back home anyhow.

At home, if you have kids around you can teach them what can be easily recycled in your area, and have them responsible for at least a part of it. My kids know that paper goes in the recycle bin, as does metal, but plastic they have to ask since our area only recycles #1 and #2 plastics that are bottle-shaped. At 2 and 5, they’re both pretty good about it.

Away from home certainly takes more of a conscious effort for everyone involved. The best solution is for more locations to make the changes to make recycling easier. That means more recycle bins in parks and other places, and workplaces making it easier for their employees to recycle.

It also requires local governments to take more of a role. They need to make recycling more appealing than throwing things in the trash. That can mean giving a discount on trash service if you recycle as well. It may complicate the bookkeeping a little for whichever company handles waste disposal, but how else are we to encourage it?

Technorati Tags: recycling challenges

Seattle has passed a new ordinance requiring all residents to subscribe to their food trash recycling program, starting in 2009. This is for all single family residences, not apartment complexes or such, although they can subscribe as well.

This is an interesting idea. The story caught my attention, as I have a sister in Bothell, although I don’t think she’ll be impacted, since that’s a different city that only happens to be near Seattle. The only thing I question is whether or not requiring the subscription is the right decision.

Don’t get me wrong, I think food scraps should be recycled. But this seems to me to be something of a penalty to those who compost in their back yards. They’ll still have to pay, even though they are doing their part to reduce what goes into the landfill.

But I do also see something of a problem in only requiring this for single family homes:

Recycling food waste will be voluntary for apartments, as well as for businesses, which produce twice as much food waste as residents.

Now, as a first step perhaps this is logical, but if other sources are producing twice the waste it would be nice to see them bearing some of the burden of food waste recycling too.

At the same time as I dislike that even families who compost have to pay for this, I like that the city is making food waste recycling possible. That is a wonderful step. Food waste has no place in the garbage dump. It is too easily made into compost, so utterly recyclable it is almost insanity to do anything else with it.

What do you think? Should more areas start requiring food trash recycling? How do you think such programs should be run?

Technorati Tags: food trash recycling, food waste, trash, recycling, composting