There’s nothing I like better than garbage day. I love putting out crap and having it carted away. Less stuff in my house! Yay!

In the past couple of years I’ve tried to reduce the amount of waste we produce and I am pleased with my progress, although there is still a lot more I could be doing. One thing that I’ve really tried to do is to recycle everything that we possibly can. I did some research about a year and a half ago to find out exactly what could and couldn’t go into our recycling bins, and now I try to make sure we follow all the rules.

I think some people think that it’s better to put something in the recycling bin than the garbage bin, even if you’re not sure that it belongs there. They figure, better safe than sorry, and if it isn’t actually recyclable, then they’ll just sort it all out at the plant. But this is not true! If our city’s recycling bins are too contaminated with garbage, then the city will not be able to sell its recyclables for a good price, and so it will no longer be worth their while to pick up the recycling. Then we’ll run into situations like a couple of years ago in Ottawa, when they stopped picking up #5 plastics like margarine tubs and yogurt containers, which was just weird. Also, bins with too many contaminants will just cause the whole batch to be junked — maybe even the whole truckful — so my efforts at recycling are wasted.

So I do have mild concern when I see a lot of stuff out in bins on garbage day that probably shouldn’t be in there.

Here’s a little recap for Ottawa. Black bins can take all kinds of paper, including fliers, magazines, hard and soft cover books, all wrapping paper (Jesus, I remember when my family used to fill two or three garbage bags of wrapping paper every Christmas morning…so tragic!), greeting cards, envelopes and other fine paper (you may wish to shred this stuff first — shredded paper should be placed in a paper bag and stapled shut), egg cartons, and the tubes from paper towels and toilet paper. Window envelopes are okay (the window part is usually made from cellulite, which is recyclable). A little bit of tape or staples on your paper or cardboard boxes is okay, but if you can remove as much of that kind of stuff as possible, that’s good, because the fewer the contaminants, the better the price the city can command. Foil paper, bows, and ribbons are strictly NOT allowed. Tissues (used or clean) and napkins (used or clean) are strictly NOT allowed. Pizza boxes are okay as long as they are do not have any food (i.e. stuck-on cheese) inside. In general, anything contaminated with food is not allowed. Little crates from clementine oranges are also not allowed.

Blue bins can take glass jars or bottles of any colour, metal cans of almost any nature, plastic pop bottles, juice bottles, or shampoo-like bottles marked with a 1 or 2, and wide-mouthed margarine and yogurt containers marked with a 5, milk and juice boxes, tetra packs, and spiral-wound containers with metal ends like frozen juice containers. You can also put clean (non-greasy) aluminum foil in there, and the lids from plastic tubs are okay too. Here in Ottawa, you CANNOT add any hard plastics (like toys or plastic cutlery) or any plastics labeled with a 3, 4, 6, or 7. You can’t put in any clear thin plastics like the kind used for cookie/cake containers you get from the grocery store, or the kind that is attached to the front of packages, like when you buy a toy and its package is a cardboard sheet with a plastic bubbly-bit on the front (the cardboard part is recyclable if you tear off all the plastic bits). You also can’t recycle any plastic bags or styrofoam cups or packaging. So cut it out, people on my street!