apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Wine bottles, The New Yorker, empty espresso bean tins -- your basic liberal cliche.

ok, I got a sincere question... Why do pple sort their recycling? I put all my recycling in a bucket and on sunday night everything - from tins to cardboard - gets dumped in the blue recycling cans we have in los angeles. I know this is a chicago post, but ive read LA posts where pple do this too. As for what my recycling says about me - I am a cat lady. 90% of my recycling is cat food tins. :(

Lol, I hope my neighbors are not as nosy as you
;)

Perrier bottles, Diet Coke cans, cereal boxes... Regular stuff.

chusmabilly, I think that some cities require that you sort certain items. My city sorts for us, so I do the same as you (though I usually separate paper in case and bottles/cans are still wet).

My recycling says: I use too many free water bottles from work because I forget to bring yesterdays back with me.

My recycling shows that I'm a raging alcoholic.

LOL! I'm in the recycling bin with you spinsLPs...

oh yeah, and I'm a cat lady too

Many cans of Diet Coke, the occassional bottle of beer, yogurt cups.

I don't know how to recycle paper in Chicago, other than bringing it to work with me. :\ I hate our recycling program.

I shop way too much at Trader Joes.

My recycling is filled with junk mail --- which fills me with rage at the companies from whom I've not bought anything in years and yet I still get a catalog every other day. I'm looking at you, Victoria's Secret!

My recycling shows that I drink, but the neighbor's bins look just like mine so I don't worry about it.

That I don't bring my recycling out often enough and I like pizza.

My recycling shows that I just moved. The bin is guiltily full of packing paper. But at least it's better than bubble wrap or packing peanuts, which would end up in the trash...

Beer bottles (1554, imperial stout, or avery ipa) lot's of junk mail, austin chronicle, & various plastic bottles. I live in an apartment so I take everything to the recycling center in boxes I got from the local beer & wine store. I don't get paper bags from the grocery store 'cause I take my own...I don't really think about what it says about me I'm more concerned with what can I reduce or eliminate?

My recycling says I read the wall street journal, I get way to many magazines (although I've started to lend out my entertainment weekly) and some weeks i drink alot and some weeks I don't! Oh and I get plenty of junk mail too!

Oh this is so funny -- my old roommate used to make sure she had Newsweek (or some other respectable publication) on the top and bottom of the recylcling pile -- needless to say the middle was sandwiched full of Us Weekly & soap opera magazines. I thought that was the most paranoid thing to do (it never occured to me that ANYONE would look at, let alone care what was in my recycling) but, here you are bringing up that exact topic!

Every two weeks we put out our recycling: we are serious drunk (average over 30 bottles of wine), magazine reading, online shopping (boxes) whores.

We get cash for returning our beer and wine bottles (not much but usually enough after a few cases for another case!)
mainly pizza boxes and lots of junk mail too.

we started using a big trashcan for our recycling, but turns out unless its next to our citys green recycling bin the trash guys will dump it as trash.. even though its clearly marked at each angle. i found that out today, when we only left it out on its own. it kinda pissed me off. :/

Before I really knew my neighbors I had invited them over for my superbowl party. They admitted that they looked in my recycling bin on recycling day to see if we drank! LOL

Remember this in times like these: In apartment dumpsters, nobody knows who it/they is/are that drink(s) too much.

Bottles of Stella Artois and various Cal. chardonnays. Wall Street Journal, LA Times and the National Review.

I've thought about this before, too. It's legal for people to dig through your trash, why not the recycling? That's why I either shred my paper recycling or take it to the school's bin down the block. The school gets money for recycling the paper and you don't have to sort newspapers from junk mail or magazines.

My recycling says I drink too much Coke, sometimes eat canned vegetables, and have allergies (little Zyrtec bottles).

Well, let's see, I do live in an apartment and all my recycling ends up in the communal dumpsters out behind my building but the bin I use to corrall all that in between dumpings would show, some processed food boxes (for when I'm too lazy to cook or simply crave say frozen sliders :-)), wine bottles of the Vendage variety (cheap and decent), canned green beans, canned peaches and other assorted canned stuffs, body wash bottles and since I by the big pumps of the Kirkland brand shampoo at Costco, I go through a bottle in about 3-6 months.

all of my junk mail gets recycled immediatly at the mailbox for there are bins for just such stuff. I'd recycle more paper unfortunately, the bedroom trash can gets more than paper in it often.

and of course, the occasional large box from something I purchased.

water... a shite-load of water and coke, and lots of whiskey. lol

About half a year ago, our trash collection and sorting rules changed and I pondered this question. What I found more interesting than what my trash says about me was what it says about my neighbors in the same building. They all have less trash than I do which made me curious. I'm not a big consumer of anything. In fact, I hate shopping. What I realized was that the difference was that I cook at home almost all the time and my single neighbors are eating out. It's easy to have no Styrofoam food trays or food packaging to recycle when you never cook (even fruit and vegetables are on such trays in Tokyo - you can't avoid them).

Are you trying to tell me that I drink too much beer?