THE RECYCLE KID (contributed by Sue Von Feldt)

THE RECYCLE KID
Contributed by Sue Von Feldt on September 9, 2009
Added to Chapter 11 of the online webbook

Do you remember how much my mom recycled…..I used to call her the “recycle kid”! On her back porch, she had sacks for glass, cans, cardboard, plastic, newspapers, and a special big one for pop cans as she got money for those. I think all of us kids saved our cans for her and she would take a couple big bags of cans home with her on each visit. She would take all them to the recycling place at Great Bend. She used to burn the rest, which was very little. When the county passed the burning law, she talked to John Herter and asked him is she could put her occasional paper sack of items that could not be recycled in his big trash bin at his shop. He was totally okay with that but one time the cop saw mom doing it and stopped and asked her what she was doing. She explained they had an agreement as he rented her land and that satisfied him and he let her go on her way.

This was her way of being a good citizen and trying to do her part of not filling up the landfills and it just made more sense to her that we should recycle everything we could and not be wasteful. She did not like being wasteful. This applied to being wasteful of food also. She did not like the way younger generations are so wasteful with food.

The bonus was the money the recycling company paid for the aluminum pop cans. She would take the money she got and use it to buy her lunch at one of her favorite fast food places on the 10th Street strip in Great Bend.

With mom living with us these last few years, I could not throw a pop can away; I continued to save them and then when I had about 4 bags full, mom and I would take them to the recycle place……then we would head off to the Pad (a hamburger joint in North Topeka) and enjoy our hamburger and fries from our profit.

I have been thinking, in memory of mom, maybe I should start recycling more; if everyone did what mom did, this earth would be a much better place. Maybe we all should make the extra effort to help our environment. Our Megan is big into the recycling and she was so proud of great-grandma and her recycling.