Reduce. Reuse. Rethink.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Tuesday is recycling day in my neck of the woods.
Every household puts out a blue bin for recycling and therein lie a million stories.
If my neighbors knew what can be gleaned from their recycling bins:
Where they shop. What they eat. How they spend.
They'd stop. Dead men tell no tales but recycling bins speak volumes.
Here's the family that drinks non-BgH milk from plastic bottles.
The couple who eat organic beans from cans lined with BPA.
The beer drinkers.
The drinker who stopped.
The self-proclaimed sustainable eater whose bin overflows with packaging from processed foods.
The health-minded young family whose bin sits next to their "Warning. Chemically treated" yard sign.
Who still gets a newspaper. Or two.
Who contributes to the Jewish home for the elderly.
Who clips "Boxtops for education". Who doesn't.
Most remarkable, how the new Trader Joe's has colonized our neighborhood.
From now on, my junk mail is going into a brown paper bag before it hits the bin. The rest of my recyclables -- frankly, I feel smug, although to someone else, no doubt, its a whole different story.