THE LAST WORD | By Polly Campbell
Recycling hub finds a place for things with nowhere else to go
I
consider myself a pretty dedicated recycler. I would no more throw a plastic bottle or a can in the trash than toss it in the woods. I lug food scraps from the kitchen to the compost heap even in the winter, and I try to find appropriate places to give away items I no longer use. But if you want to see recycling as it should be done, practiced by a master, check out my husband, Neil. Like me, he’s a recycler by conviction, but for him it’s deeper: It’s simply not possible for him to waste things. So he interacts with the reduce, reuse and recycle triangle on every side. He’s one tiny disruptor of the system of always-growing production and consumption that has gotten the environment into the perilous state it’s now in. He won’t buy something new if he can buy it used, though he
makes exceptions for new things that are more energy-efficient, like our highly satisfactory electric lawn mower or new energy-efficient windows. He won’t throw anything out if he can fix it and he does, sometimes wearing the socks our daughters gave him for Christmas that say “I said I could fix it!” He has a hierarchy of how to give things away: If it’s worth money and not too big, it goes on eBay. You should try this: It can be a real thrill. He was encouraged by an early experience of getting several hundred dollars for a 10-year-old electronic dog collar and receiver. If it’s bulky, Craigslist. Not too valuable, it goes on our neighborhood Buy Nothing list. Clothing goes to Goodwill. Plastic bags go to the grocery store. He collects egg cartons for someone who keeps chickens, eyeglasses to eyeglass drives, etc.
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FEBRUARY 2022
Movers & Makers
Polly Campbell
Anything Rumpke takes, goes in the green bin, clean and sorted. And plenty still goes in the trash. Neil isn’t some kind of freegan outsider. We live a perfectly comfortable life, though I will admit to sometimes being irritated when he takes something out of the trash that I just put in.
plastic lumber. And they take No. 2, 4, 5, 7 and no-number plastic, and send it to Bright Mark in Indiana where they use pyrolysis to break it down into diesel fuel, industrial wax and, in the gold standard of recycling, a closed loop, into new plastic. So you don’t have to sort all your stuff by where it goes, and add a lot of stops to your to-do list, you can combine quite a bit of it and make one stop to get it to places it So what a great thing for him – will be used. You can help further and all other recyclers – that there by volunteering, which is essential is now the Cincinnati Reuse And to the Hub’s work. It’s not a bad Recycling Hub, a nonprofit with a volunteer gig if you like something warehouse in the West End where simple and hands-on like sorting they accept all kinds of things that straws by color or packing office have nowhere else to go. They take binders in boxes. Styrofoam and old shoes, glue I|think of recycling as simply sticks and toothpasteWEDDINGS tubes, old MEETINGS | DINING denim and aerosol cans, no-number cleaning up after yourself. I wish it was more of an automatic impulse plastic and a lot more. in more people. McSwiggin knows The three women who got it what they do is a drop in the bucket started were each involved in parwhen she thinks of the looming ticular kinds of recycling. Colleen deadline of 2030, when climate McSwiggin worked on electronchange will be too far gone to fix. ics recycling drives at Mount St. Recycling is just one small part Joseph; Carrie Harms spearheaded of fighting that inevitability. It’s not the recycling of design samples like about diverting items from landfills wallpaper books and leather samfor its own sake, it’s about the prodples; and Erin Fay collected chip ucts people don’t buy, the resources bags and more through Terracycle. saved, the energy not burned by Those all started as time-limited re-using existing materials. drives, but the demand was yearShe and the other people round, and all the projects needed involved in the Hub put a lot of more space. So they opened their work into it. But, says McSwiggin, warehouse on April 1, 2021. “When I’m exhausted at the end of Like Neil on a bigger scale, they the day, and I see people lining up, have places to send everything doing their part, I do feel hope.” where it can have its next highest purpose. Early on, someone asked if they took silica packets. He was a caver, and needed them to keep Polly Campbell covered restaurants and food for The Cincinnati Enquirer food stashed in caves dry. The Hub now has one box in their warehouse from 1996 until 2020. She lives in Pleasant Ridge with her husband and for saving silica packets. since retiring does a lot of reading, cookBut that’s just a small example. ing and gardening, if that’s what you call More than half of what they take is pulling up weeds. During the pandemic, electronics. They take small pieces she has missed the theater, live music of PVC materials to recycle into and, most especially, going to parties.
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