Learning the Three R's

Reduce, reuse, and recycle! I've never been to a country where such a high priority has been placed on recycling. It's a good thing, but it's taken some adjustment as well. For starters, when we first arrived here we discovered three trash cans on the side of the house. We thought, "A-HA! We are in luck!" That is exactly what we needed back home in Glen Allen. C'mon, four kids and someone who loves to shop (*ahem*), we put out a fair amount of trash. AND, we did actually recycle there as well. For me, it started out as a job to give to our oldest son. Instill pride, value of work, blah blah blah.... Afterall, it was he who lectured me on not producing so much trash and "killing the trees". After a year or so I really enjoyed the fact that we were doing what we could to help Mother Earth. After living in London for a mere 3 weeks, I laugh at how little we did. Okay, so some of the three R's here are forced upon you from the government, but honestly, people seem to truly enjoy taking better care of the environment.

So, back to the story of the three trash cans. We did put them all out to the street on our appointed trash day. That afternoon, two were still full and one emptied. Hmmm.....a few calls to the county and we were told that only trash can is allowed and the other two are for recycling (these are HUGE trash cans). Well, after laughing at our American sized attitudes on trash pickup and doubting our ability to follow these imposed regulations, we thought we'd give it a try. Two weeks later, we are loving it. We recycle everything we can, and produce so little trash. We hardly fill up the one trash can each week. Grocery stores encourage you to purchase reusable bags (quite stylish, too, I might add) to carry into their stores to prevent so much plastic in the landfills. I'm having fun with the stylish bags, too! I recently read that a local designer put out some of her own bags (they're called "I'm not a plastic bag") and they are quite the hot item. I located a few of them at ebay this morning going for nearly £200 pounds. Crazy, isn't it?

So, it's been fun learning and encouraging healthier habits here in England. Kudos to the government for forcing it on us all! It may not be a bad thing after all!