Snow and Recycling

It's snowing here this morning, and as I make coffee and oatmeal I can look out our windows and see kids walking to the school across the street or being dropped off by their families in the pretty whiteness.  Two boys who clearly love the snow just galloped down the street while another child is drudging along with his parent, who, I can tell even from here, is urging them to "get a move on."  There's always something to see out our windows.  Oh, yeah! I just saw Maurice, the caretaker of our neighbor's houses while they are away for the winter, run a snow blower down our front sidewalk.  Thank you, Maurice!

It snowed last Monday night, starting just as I left an art quilt meeting in Westminster, and it quickly turned into a real storm, complete with almost white-out driving.  I'm not used to that and my drive home was correspondingly white-knuckled.  That little blizzard left us with about five or six inches  and then later in the week it snowed again,  giving us another couple of inches.  This morning's snow accumulation was forecast for less than an inch and I think we already have that.  You never know around here what will happen with the weather.

The snow does make the landscape very lovely.

On the Lion's Lair trail in Boulder

Clear Creek, Golden

I've had some fun lately dining with friends, hiking, antiquing in Golden, and going to a good bluegrass concert  at the Boulder Theater.   But an interesting thing I did was to take a tour of the Boulder County Recycling Facility. The county's recycling efforts are extensive, with single stream recycling for all kinds of paper and cardboard as well as glass, aluminum and plastic.  There's also curbside pickup for compost of all types, including yard and food waste, paper towels, and other compostable products such as napkins.

The facility uses a big conveyor belt to sort out the different types of material.

At certain points there are staff that hand pick out nonconforming items.

The workers are especially on the lookout for plastic bags.  One of my take-aways from the tour was that at least around here there's a lot of problems recycling plastic bags.  They jam the conveyor belts and therefore aren't included in curbside pickup.  We have to take them to CHARM (Center for Hard to Recycle Materials) where they are collected and sent to a company that uses them to make decking. 

 Another thing I learned which may apply to recycling across the country is that only bottles and containers made from glass and aluminum are actually recycled into new bottles and containers.  Plastic bottles are rarely recycled back into plastic bottles.  Most often they are processed down into little pellets used to make all sorts of other useful things like clothing, toothbrushes, and carpets.  Isn't it mind boggling to think of all the plastic bottles that we use and how they don't get turned back into new bottles after we use them?

I also toured the CHARM facility where we  drop off plastic bags, old yoga mats, small electronics,  and other hard to recycle items.  At each drop off station there are signs explaining exactly what is accepted and what isn't. 

The most interesting thing there was to see what happens to all the Styrofoam that is dropped off.  We diligently haul ours over to CHARM and push it through a window under the Styrofoam sign.  I always wondered what happened next.   On the tour we were taken back behind the window where we saw this:

See the window in the back?  There's a pile of Styrofoam under it that people have dropped off.  It is put into the big red and black machine which chops it up into little pieces and condenses them  down into the "logs" that you can see stacked on the right.  These logs are painted and used in construction!  Well, now I know what happens behind the door!

Ben just told me that the current forecast is for "snow showers" ending soon, but as I look out our window I see it is way more than a "shower."  Our friend Ray dropped by and reported that the roads are slick.  I'm ready to spend the day inside quilting and watching "Grey's Anatomy" (which I somehow missed when it first came out) but we're scheduled to deliver lunch for Meals on Wheels soon so duty calls.  Should be an adventure. 

Ben also suggests that we should have this chicken and pasta dish from Food and Wine tonight for dinner.  Looks good to me!