Taking Care of Business
Second only to feeding the goats at the neighborhood Kinderboederij, the favorite activity for a certain four-year-old in this house is the glass recycler just around the corner. Once each week, or perhaps not quite as often as that, we gather all the empty glass jars and bottles in the house and carry them down the street to the green metal bins. Marked carefully for white, green and brown glass, this receptacle is built partially in the ground and is the perfect height for our little man to heft the bottles into the slot and push them on their journey down-down-down into the deep cache of... what? Broken glass I guess.
Whoosh~CRASH! The bottles slide through the opening and land splat on top, shattering with a satisfactory cacophonous sound.
"Again!" Andrew cries. "Another one!" And we watch bottle after bottle disappear into the deep chasm.
It's always a little hard to wait until the next jar of peanut butter is empty so we can play the game again.
The truth is I have always been a lover of the recycling mantra--reduce, reuse, recycle--but never knew it could be so much fun to send glass on the first part of it's journey to become something new.
I find the double measure of entertainment while taking care of the earth to be extremely appealing.
Don't you know nothin', woman? Breaking a whole bunch of glass AND IT'S OK is absolutely too much fun for a four-year-old boy!
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of too much fun, I got a post card last Friday! Thank you! Now I need YOUR address (or AN address) so I can reciprocate!
Me too! I got the postcard too!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to reciprocate, if you're giving out your address.
Reduce-reuse-recycle-reciprocate?
Our local council pick up the recycling. Much easier - but nowhere near as much fun.
ReplyDeleteBreaking glass -- thrilling music! Hey, I got my postcard, too! Thanks so much! (I think I still have your address somewhere. Maybe I can surprise you....)
ReplyDeleteShattering glass is just great. Childhood memories... sigh... Thanks for pointing out the Blog Action Day, by the way, I joined too. You can take credit for that. :)
ReplyDeletewe have the same weekly crash party- my kids also get a great thrill out of smashing cans and plastic bottles. It's such a no-brainer that I can't beleive everyone isn't doing it...
ReplyDeleteIt's so interesting to see all the different ways that recycling, etc., is supported in different places.
ReplyDeletei wish we had something like this here! Recycling here became almost nonexistent after Hurricane Katrina, and it's so frustrating!
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by my blog!
While our girls have outgrown the fascination of taking the bottles to the glass bins, they are still utterly fascinated by the truck that comes by to empty these bins. You need to check out when it happens as I know it would be a real treat! Big machine, crane-like lifting arm, boxes being pulled up from the ground, and very satisfying crashing noises as the glass is dumped in the back of the truck!!
ReplyDeleteIt is the simple things that children love the most. I bet he loves it best because he spending fun time with you.
ReplyDeleteHugs,
Connie
Excellent! The fun the kids have when learning how to save the earth is definitely double the value.
ReplyDeleteI love that you have even the littlest involved in your recycling efforts. Today, he loves it because he get to sort and break glass and feel useful. But you've instilled in him a responsibility for this planet that we all share and he'll remember it all his life, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful how much joy the little things give to a small child. Would that adults would find joy in the small things, too.
ReplyDeleteRecycling our glass isn't nearly as exciting. We just get to put it in the big blue bin for the garbage men to take. Then they get to break it, I guess.
ReplyDeleteWe do, however, get to crush the aluminum cans. We can use the handcranking crusher, but most times, I prefer to do it with my foot. It's great for those "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore" days.
On Monday I wrote a long, long comment here ... about how you made Blog Action Day so much fun by telling a boy's story of real joy, about having gotten your post card that very day (Monday), and about how you should send your address so I could reciprocate. Blogger ate it. Blogger said "sorry" and then returned a blank comment box to me. I didn't have time to re-think it and re-type it, and so my belated thanks to you, dear Jenn. Getting wonderful mail for a change is a ... well ... wonderful thing, and I want to return the favor. Please send me your address, pretty please? You can email it to emerging dot paradigm at yahoo dot com, and I'll use that address in a most appropriate way ... for your enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Have fun in Germany! And bring back lots of blog stories and photos.
I can so relate to this. It was completely satisfying to take my glass to the recycling place in Vermont where I lived and drop them and hear them smash. It felt so good. Maybe it has something to do with something that is normally a bad actually being what is supposed to happen.
ReplyDelete