Recycle

We traveled by car to West Yellowstone (W.Y.), and back, recently. Took the 30mpg gallon car instead of the 17mpg truck. Maybe a bad choice since our A/C went out going over Donner summit. After 2 garages (Truckee and West Yellowstone) telling us they couldn't find anything wrong with the car, Nissan San Jose was finally able to get the car to act up. Needs a new radiator, they think. Summer is almost over and we don't have $800. I guess we'll wait till spring to do the repair.
What's this have to do with recycling? Well, either of those garages could have sold us something we didn't need. After all, we were from out of town, and probably wouldn't complain once we were down the highway. Two good things, these guys were really nice (and honest), and we kept working auto parts out of the dump. At least when we replace the radiator we live in an area where it will be recycled.
Which brings me to the rest of the Country, at least the part we drove through. It was surprising to me how little recycling was going on in so many of the places we stopped. Everywhere from a rest area at Battle Mountain NV, to Yellowstone Park itself. In Campbell it is easy to recycle, there is weekly curbside pick-up of a mixed materials bin. For a majority of our trip we were lucky if we found a plastics/aluminum bin for drink containers. The town of W.Y. even had its recycling center shut down because it was overflowing and they couldn't control the scavenging bears. So instead of having someplace to drop off your stuff, you had to throw it away. There were just no other options. And the Park... you would think that if Yosemite was able to have bear proof bins everywhere, for a variety of materials, then Yellowstone could do the same. But no, we only infrequently saw a bin, and then only for plastic/aluminum.
So let's try to get everyone on board the recycle train, even just a little bit. The little extra effort put out by individuals, and maybe an office building or two, will help more than forcing everyone in California to switch to CFL's.