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I suppose there are lots of things we do to feel good about ourselves. I am quite sure that it varies from human to human, but I must confess my latest personal feel good is the amount of recycling that we’ve been doing lately.

Now before this gets classified as a tree hugger rant, I should say that recycling has only been on my proactive radar from my Athens days where they would pick up your recyclable materials from the curbside. Having earth preservation tenancies from younger hippie predispositions and currently firmly believing that we currently belch out way to much waste to landfills on a daily basis, how could the process be wrong?

Having lived in Atlanta for some time, I only recently became aware that Dekalb county offers an amazing recycling program where they pretty much pick up everything, including all plastics.

I finally got down to breaking up some boxes of some recent larger purchases, namely a toaster and a Onkyo entertainment system. Much to my surprise and satisfaction, both were nearly completely packaged with materials that were completely recyclable. The only thing left over that wasn’t recyclable were a couple pieces of tape.

It has made a tremendous difference in our output of waste material. We really only take out the trash once every two weeks. My sincere hope is that all this stuff that we’re recycling is really making it to a reusable state. I have my doubts, but would prefer to believe that such materials are actually going towards reuse.

If you live in Dekalb county of Atlanta, sign up and feel better about yourself.