Barbara Wood's Dispatches from the Home Front: Great moments in recycling: one woman's proudest feat Barbara Wood's Dispatches from the Home Front: Great moments in recycling: one woman's proudest feat (February 18, 2004)

There's been a lot of trash talk going around my house lately.

In fact, my children have begun to refer to me as a "Trash Nazi" and snicker every time I pull things out of the kitchen garbage can and redirect them to the proper receptacle.

I don't know why none of them can get it -- they're all fairly intelligent, especially my husband with his Ph.D. from Berkeley. He seems not even to know the difference between trash and edible leftovers that go to the chickens, or trash and non-edible recyclables that go in the recycling bins.

I know it may be a little harder to differentiate between organics that the chickens can eat and organics that they can't (which go in the compost pile), but really, I don't know why he continues to throw the plastic newspaper bag into the trash every day when it's soooo obvious it goes in the recycling.

He even completely ignored me the other day when I informed him that he could compost the shredded papers from his office.

I'll admit I may be a little more fanatic about this than most people -- but I take a great amount of personal pride in how little garbage is in my can on pickup days.

I think my greatest moment in recycling came this fall after we had 135 people over for the cast party at the end of the Woodside community theater's production of "Annie Get Your Gun." The next day there were a lot of bags of trash. I knew they'd never fit in my one can, but I also knew how to solve the problem.

I donned yellow rubber gloves, opened each bag and pulled out all the cans, bottles, cardboard, and plastic plates, cups and cutlery from the night before. I scraped the food into a pile (for the chickens and compost pile), folded the cardboard, rinsed the plasticware and stacked it.

By the time I was finished I hadn't even filled up the six recycling bins we have, and I was down to one bag of garbage that half-filled my can. It was mostly paper napkins.

I even ran a dishwasher load of plastic plates and cups so we could reuse them a few times before recycling them. We're still using plastic cups from the party, although it is kind of a pain when they spring a leak at the dinner table.

I'm not foolish enough not to believe this incredible feat will impress everyone. Some people, I know, might just view my behavior as a little, shall we say, eccentric.

But I know I do have at least one, unintentional, ally in my quest to keep the garbage can empty. My chocolate lab, Moose, who just had his first birthday, has been creeping down the stairs at night and looking for treats in the garbage. After the night he fished out a pheasant carcass (and then stored most of it in his bed to eat later) I've been making sure the lid's shut tight.

Barbara Wood writes from her home in Woodside, assisted by three red-headed children, a chocolate lab, four chickens and a black bunny. Her column runs the third week of the month.

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