Pop quiz: What was one of the first things to be sold on the international plastics market when Coeur d’Alene changed the way it recycles? Answer: About 16,000 blue recycling bins. Yes, the bins. Poof. Gone. “We were flooded with bins. They all came through here,” says Steve Moon, plant manager for a local firm that sorts and sells Coeur d’Alene’s recyclables. The bins were sold in Canada, which has an active market for many kinds of recycled plastics, he adds. In mid-October, Coeur d’Alene took a great leap forward into what is known as single-stream recycling, a program that more than doubles the kinds of household items taken for recycling. And it’s simple: Everything is dumped into a collection cart that is sorted elsewhere/Kevin Taylor, Inlander. More here.

Question: I’m using my old, dark-blue, recycling “box” for kindling. What are you using yours for?

Give them bigger bins, and they will use them. The first day of single stream recycling in sections of Coeur d’Alene on Monday proved that. “We had a huge participation rate, a fantastic response,” said Steve Roberge, district manager of Waste Management of Idaho. The company retrieved recyclables in the first half of the city where larger 64-gallon recycling bins have already been delivered to residences. The last of the 14,000 bins will be delivered to homes by the end of the week. That part of town will have its recycling bins picked up Oct. 25. Roberge said they’re already seeing double the recycling participation rate/Tom Hasslinger & Maureen Dolan, Coeur d’Alene Press. More here. (SR photo)

Question: Psst. Don’t tell Christa, but I find using the new recycling bins much easier than the little blue boxes of the past. How about you? Do you plan to recycle more with the single-stream bins?

Recycling is something most people will agree is a good idea, but a fraction of those people will actually follow through. The biggest excuse for not recycling is inconvenience. For some, it’s hard enough to get their trash in a garbage receptacle, let alone distinguish what is recyclable and then find a place to properly dispose of it. Today, the University of Idaho produces about 350 tons of carbon-equivalent emissions in its waste stream. To get an idea of how much students are throwing away that could be recycled, just ask one of the people who sorted through campus garbage to remove 11.5 tons of recyclables in the last year/Sydney Boyd, UI Argonaut. More here.

Question: How much do you recycle?