Recycling!!

I am so, so excited about Baltimore County switching over to single stream recycling. I know this makes me a huge dork, but I think it's awesome. It makes it so much easier, and I'm excited because I think more people will do it now. Just throw it all in one bin, no sorting, no tying of bags, nothing. Recycling is one of those things that I am obsessed with. I take other people's recycling home. I can't stand to see recyclables in the trash. If I see stuff in the street, all I can think is, that's going to be in a landfill for thousands of years. So, anything that will make it easier for people to recycle is good with me.

In a similar vein, I saw a thing online about people collecting coffee grounds from Starbucks for composting. I called the Roland Park one, and they were very friendly and helpful; they are saving some for me and I'm going to try and pick them up on my way home today. They bag them up for you in recycled paper bags and give the stuff away free. Again, it would be just as easy for them to throw it out, but it's nice to see it going to a good use rather than sitting in a plastic bag in a landfill. And it's great for the compost pile... you can even put them directly on acid loving things like blueberries. I may try some on my blue hydrangea.

I went out and turned the compost yesterday and I have definitely had visitors to the bin as of late. I am hoping it's just squirrels and not a rat, but it didn't seem to be that recent. The compost is doing OK, but it was pretty frozen on the edges. I think I'm going to start a new bin in the spring, perhaps one that's made of fencing rather than a closed bin. I also bought a paper shredder so I can start shredding and recycling junk mail and paper. I added some new shredded paper to the worm bin last week and it has really helped with the flies. It's still not perfect; I think there's just more food in there than they can handle, so I'm going to give them some time to catch up. I'm still waiting for it to look like soil in there, but it's far from it. I'd like to see pictures of someone else's worm bin to see what it looks like. I haven't given up yet!