Trash

I want you all to take a close look at this. This is a bag of trash that I received in the Garden House the other day when I was sorting TerraCycle. Now, I want you all to know that I am typically not very squeamish about touching garbage. I will sort trash until the cows come home with my bare hands. But this, this bag begged for gloves. So gloves I donned.

While I tremendously appreciate people donating items for TerraCycle, this bag was not fully appreciated. I had to pick through used tissues, candy wrappers (a brigade we are not on), and so many other pieces of ACTUAL trash that I can't even remember what they were specifically.

The reason I am sharing this with you is that I want you to avoid this headache. I have brainstormed ways to encourage people to donate only items for the brigades that we are on, and the only thing I have come up with thus far is somehow having donation bins outside of your collection site that are designated by brigade so the donators themselves have to separate out their trash before turning it in to you.

Another idea that Dr. Garner had was that we have a sign-in sheet for people who drop off when we are not there, so that we can at least tell who is bringing which bags, and can address any issues with the individual person as needed.

Any other thoughts on this?