Sarcastically, a character in a British television show we just watched, said, “I guess you think recycling is a novel idea.” In other words, you must have been living your life in a bunker if you don’t know about recycling.
Around for decades, officially, my mom famously employed her version of recycling since at least the sixties. She re-used margarine tubs which the family hopefully deposited in a recycling bin somewhere when she passed, leaving dozens if not hundreds of them stored in a basement cupboard. She also sorted trash into burnable paperboard from landfill-bound other garbage.
Not everybody likes recycling. Some folks prefer to pop everything used into the garbage, and that’s that.
Recycling isn’t just about stuff. I mean, we recycle ideas all the time. Memory itself is the epitome of recycling. You recall something from the past and redesign it for use in the present.
The word-symbol, recycling pops up frequently enough in my dreams to seem, recurring. Recurring dreams are really unresolved subconscious material trying softly to come out into the light.
What is recycling? It’s essentially resurrecting something used, potentially destined for the trash bin, and using it again. Most recycling is also repurposing, or finding a new purpose for that used thing.
Commercial recycling of aluminum cans (think soda, beer, energy drinks, or some cat food cans) make new aluminum cans, rain gutters, or window frames. Plastic bottles (water, milk, laundry soap, etc.) can become buckets, outdoor play sets and lumber, new bottles, stadium seats, frisbees and other containers.
Glass bottles can become new jars, bottles, or fiberglass. Steel/tin cans have become car or bike parts, appliances, new cans, or rebar.
Cardboard transforms into paperboard, the stuff your dry laundry soap, pasta, and cereal packages are made of, and in which other boxed items are sold. Office paper and junk mail can become facial tissue, paper towels, toilet tissue, new computer paper or notebook paper.
So, what have you resurrected from the throw-away pile in your mind, to repurpose in 2022? Perhaps you’ve buried it deep in the landfill of your subconscious. How about experimenting with bringing it up into the compost pile, and plant some flowers or a tree into its new, rich, fertile soil.