What I'd like to talk about this month is our local Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHARM) run by Eco-cycle. It's in Boulder and it's pretty amazing. They will take all kinds of things that aren't recyclable at other places. This is due to the Eco-cycle organization's efforts to create a circular economy for these items.
This trip we got rid of some block Styrofoam, an old broken lcd TV, some broken headphones, a few broken hard plastic dishes, some of the kids old shoes that were too worn out to donate, and a broken scale. They also take mattresses, scrap metal, small appliances, cooking oil, toilets, sinks, concrete, fire extinguishers, and textiles. They will take your stretchy "film" plastics and recyclables as well. So it's pretty comprehensive and really impressive.
We also bought 10 gallons of micro biome compost tea that Eco-cycle sells at the charm. I put it in my garden and around my sister-in-laws' apple trees. I'm trying to garden all organically so I'm excited to see what kind of an impact the compost tea has on my plants. Here's hoping!
Next we went to the hazardous materials management facility just down the street from the charm to drop off all the used batteries we had been saving up. (We want to switch to rechargeable but that has been a slow process). And we had one aerosol can that we had found somewhere along the way (we haven't bought aerosol for a while). They take lots of other stuff as well like antifreeze, bleach, pain, wood stain, gasoline, oil, round up, sharps, and more (see second link below).
We are so lucky to have these facilities, but we are still trying to find ways to reduce our consumption of hard to recycle items as much as we can.