Hummusgirl's Blog

I was raised in a family in which you do whatever you can do to reduce, reuse, and recycle. I don’t remember my Mom being as anti-plastic as she is today. I think about recycling more frequently than I care to. I almost always try to bring canvas or tote bags along when I go shopping. I cook as much as I can stand, and I try not to buy many plastic material possessions, if any.

I sometimes cringe when I see the media try to get in on recycling or using “eco-friendly” plastics because the way I see it, why buy anything like that at all, when you can probably get away with no plastic, even though you might not want to live that kind of life.

At one point, I was really thinking about trying to visit a recycling center and observe how they recycle plastic (if they really do, as rumors are they might not). When I was in college, I did a semi-serious study and article of recycling on campus and am kinda proud that the repercussions of that article prompted stricter recycling methods.

Up until a couple years ago, there was a cool recycling center about half an hour away from us, in Pottstown, PA where you could recycle 9 different types of plastic, styrofoam, videocassettes, different colored glass, metal, corks, milk cartons, and a lot of other things. I kind of miss going there because it just seemed like a real recycling culture, if that exists.

It always seems like an oxymoron to me when I’m living in this somewhat liberal world, that touts itself as being eco-friendly, when I think they could do better. I sometimes think that the culture of the liberal set, outweighs the actual environmental repercussions, but I hope I’m wrong about that.

I sometimes fantasize about a world that survives on recycling, or at least reusing. I think there should be a futuristic movie about a hippie world that has survived yet another apocolypse because they consistently think outside the box and have organized movements to not depend on any fossil fuels. Wouldn’t that be cool? Maybe I should write it!