Plastic wrap

While we were living in Germany last fall, we recycled almost everything. After four months, we had accumulated a mere cubic foot or so of actual trash--non-recyclable stuff headed for the landfill.

Back in the U.S., we've nostalgically been collecting all of our plastic wrap. Plastic wrap is ubiquitous. Newspapers, grocery store foods, mail-order books, metal screws, the gaps between lids and containers, subscription magazines, computer components, paper towels, safety goggles, factory clay, dry-cleaned clothes, printer paper, new pottery kilns, pet fish, you name it: it comes in polyethylene bags or wrap.

Durham's recycling program does not take polyethylene thinner than a milk jug, so once we have a full [plastic] trash bag of plastic wrap (it doesn't take long), we drive it around in the car for a few weeks before sneaking it into the Good PR Plastic-Wrap Recycling Bin at Whole Foods. Whole Foods also has a Reality Trash Bin with a pictogram of plastic wrap as landfill material, so I suspect it all goes to the dump in the end, alas.