New recycling containers are filled with excitement!

Is there anything better than a new recycling container?

Of course there is, but I’m still pretty excited about the new recycling container that I received free of charge from the city this week! It’s like Christmas came early!

(Note: it was free except for the taxes we paid that allowed the city to purchase and distribute them, but hey, who’s counting?)

Anyway, I came home from work the other day and suddenly we had a new recycling bin and it was like everything had changed!

The first big change was that the kids actually took the container to the back of house when they got home instead of just leaving it on the sidewalk like usual. When I noticed that, I knew there must be something magical about it.

Here are just a few of the other wonderful things that thrill me about this new household item:

(Note: I am apparently now an old person who gets excited about things like this. If you would like to talk about the weather, please call me).

Anyway, back to the amazing new breakthroughs in recycling container technology!

It has a lid! This is important because we live on a street where lots of people walk down the sidewalk. With the old containers, our neighbors and everyone who walked by our house knew exactly which junk food boxes we recycled each week, how many times we ordered pizza and if I had purchased off-brand cereals. I sometimes would cover up the numerous boxes of Zebra Cakes with boxes from fruits and vegetables that I had only purchased only so that I could put them in the recycling bins to make the family look healthy.

It has wheels! I love trashcans and recycling cans with wheels. The last time I bought a trash can (another hugely exciting day in the life of Nick Claussen!), I was so pumped up about taking out the trash I could hardly sleep the night before. My exuberance was trashed, though, when I went to take the can out to the street and realized that it did not have wheels. Sigh. Each week now, I sadly drag it through the yard while kicking myself for forgetting to buy a can with wheels. But now I have a recycling bin with wheels, and it’s like the start of summer vacation!

It does not collect rainwater or snow and then dump water on my pants! The old bins (Red Rocket and Khan Tainer) were valuable members of the household, but they often got rainwater or snow in them if they were outside. Then, whenever I picked them up to take the recycling to the sidewalk, the water would pour out the holes in the bottom and get all over me. I never remembered to dump the water out first, and old Rocket and Khan always had a good laugh over it. Those rascals!

It is blue! I really don’t have a good reason for this, but I like the color.

They can be used for hide and seek! Seriously, if I were a child, I would be in those things constantly during hide and seek games. Then my brothers would probably make some mean jokes about wanting to recycle me for a better brother and then I would most likely throw an off-brand cereal box at them and they would probably stuff me into the trashcan, too. MOM! Ok, maybe that would turn out terribly, but it seems fun.

It has a handle! The handle makes for easy dragging. Plus, these new handles are much sturdier than the broken handles on the old containers that kept pinching my hands. Khan!!! Those old scalawags!

You could use them for racing! With the wheels and handles, and the fact that these are so large, you could definitely put a kid or two or three in one of these containers and then challenge your neighbors to a race. I am sensing a new Fourth of July neighborhood tradition!

They are tall enough to play recycle basketball with them! Half the fun of recycling is throwing the items into the containers from far away. With the old short recycling containers, the items would often annoyingly bounce out, which would throw doubt onto whether the shot was actually good or not. (Note, it would also make a mess, but I was much more concerned with my recycling basketball shooting percentage than I was with my trash rebounding figures).

I realize that some people may be concerned that the new recycling containers may be too heavy, too large or too blue, and I hope that they can work out a way to be happy with their new bins. For me, though, I can’t contain my container excitement!

I do wonder, however, about what we are supposed to do with the old containers? Are they recyclable? It would be ironic if they could be recycled and turned into new Zebra Cake boxes or into bigger recycling containers.

Will the city take them if I set them out in the street or do I need to figure out how to get them into the new recycling bin? (Note: I once had an old trash can that I had used for years, but it got so cracked and broken down that one day the city just took the whole container with the rest of the trash. That was a proud day.)

For me, I’ll miss Red Rocket and Khan Tainer, but my family is happy to welcome Bluebert to the household and we hope to use him to recycle old boxes, jars and jokes for years to come.

 

Do you also love your recycling container? If so, or even if not (but how could you not?), please feel free to comment below. Thanks.