Since beginning the 30-Day Minimalism Game, I have been continually confronted with things that I don’t know how to recycle. Of course, first I ask myself if I can reuse the item or give it away to a person or charity, and if the answer to both of those questions is “no,” then I ask myself, “can this be recycled?” Then follows an oftentimes lengthy research project via google to find the best, most appropriate [and, honestly, most convenient] way to recycle the object.

Or in this case – the entire coffee tin full of objects.

These wine corks are just another reminder to me of how little I paid attention to the waste I have been creating. Besides the ones I’ve been hoarding in this tin [for some crafty DIY project, no doubt], I have thrown many corks in the trash without even thinking about them.

Turns out that real corks can be recycled by taking them to a collection site [visit RECORK for the location nearest you] where they are gathered and made into items like cork bobbers and cork boards and cork blocks for yoga and cork shoe soles, etc. All fabulous.

Synthetic corks are apparently made out of #7 plastic [which is the “catchall” category of plastics] and can go to whatever recycling facilities take these types of plastic; BUT, #7 plastics should really be avoided anyway.

[CorkClub will apparently send you a free shipping label to send all of your corks – real and synthetic – to them and they will reuse the cork and recycle the plastic. AND they donate $.02 per cork received to organizations that support ocean and forest conservation. Sounds great, but I haven’t done this myself.]

So, I’ll be buying my wine with the real deal corks from now on and recycling them. Unfortunately, corks can’t be reused for wine because of contamination or something like that. So, this is the best I can do – besides not buy wine at all. But that definitely isn’t going to happen any time soon.

For realz…this mama needs her wine.

PLUS, fun little fact about cork:

Not a single tree, each of which can live up to 300 years, is cut down during cork extraction. Instead, bark is harvested by hand every nine to 12 years. (Read more at Earth911.com)

Cork seems like a great sustainable source for a lot of products – and recycling the stuff makes it even better!

Happy sipping! 🍷

Karis

Today was trash day once again and I am very happy to report that our trash for one week fit easily into our new tiny trash can – even with the 75 photos [and other miscellaneous things] that I threw away for the Minimalism challenge! We had so little trash that we could go for months without needing a trash pickup. BUT we definitely need a weekly recycling pickup because our recycling can is filled to overflowing.

So now we have a new problem. We are recycling too much. It may be better than sending waste to a landfill, but it is still unnecessary waste. The key is still to REDUCE, then REUSE, and then recycle. The best way to reduce my waste is to not create it in the first place.

I have been purposefully choosing recycle-able containers over things that are not when I can’t find [or am not committed enough to buy] a waste free option. But I just need to get myself more strongly committed to the cause. Although, I will have to start with a recycling inventory because I don’t even know what fills that can each week. It doesn’t seem like much when I’m throwing it in the recycling basket – but then, come Wednesday, the can is entirely full.

For the next week, I’m going to pay closer attention to what we are recycling and see where I can make changes to reduce that too.

I guess I might as well start now…

[Side note: It would be SO NICE to not need a trash pickup at all because Brett and I are SO BAD at remembering to put the cans out! Embarrassing, but true!]

Oh I’m so excited to start analyzing our garbage…kidding.

Wish me luck!

Karis