Pioneer Press author, Single Female Homeowner, asks, "If it's just little ol' me, why should I recycle?" And Rethink Recycling's Angie Timmons gets to answer. 

If it's just little ol' me, why should I recycle?

All that sorting and washing and hauling and stacking and folding is for families. People with juice boxes and papers from school and empty gallon milk jugs.

I rarely fill the 38-gallon trash container I pay to have hauled away each week. Why do I want to drag that AND those blue recycling containers all the way to the curb and back? (No smart remarks from those who know me about the 12-foot length of my driveway. I'm making a point here.)

Single people don't need to recycle.

"We hear that quite a bit," said Angie Timmons, communications manager for Rethink Recycling, the education outreach program associated with the local Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board. "The impression is, there's not that much."

But there is, Timmons says. Each person creates an average of 4.4 pounds of waste a day. If that doesn't seem like much, walk home from the supermarket with four blocks of butter. It's heavy. It takes up a chunk o' space. And that's just one day's worth.

"It doesn't seem like a lot, but think about everybody every day," Timmons says.

Rethink Recycling has calculated that the Twin Cities metro area produces enough waste to fill the Metrodome 11 times a year.

Timmons says a big factor in the amount of recycling single people have is how much they cook at home - all those cans and bottles of ingredients.

So, I cook mostly on weekends, with leftovers and carryout and a meal here and there getting me through the week.

And I do recycle. Fastidiously. In fact, I recycle the cardboard tubes inside each roll of toilet paper.

Which got me to wondering just how much recyclable stuff I'm producing.

Though recycling is picked up every week in my neighborhood, I didn't have enough to make the trip last week. This week, with an overnight guest and a family gathering, it was a different story. Here's the two-week tally, plus random things that got tossed into the pile during a fit of spring cleaning last weekend:

Two black-olive cans, two containers from coffee creamer, 15 soda cans, six wine bottles, a salsa jar, a pepper container, a peanut butter jar, 13 beer bottles, an apple juice jug, a milk bottle, two Gatorade bottles, a cardboard beer 12-pack box, a box from my new bike helmet, a shoe box, two boxes from 12-packs of soda, a toothpaste box, a cake mix box, a brownie mix box, five toilet paper rolls, a box for the new security light near my garage and a wicker picnic basket full of newspaper and junk mail.

Whew. That's a lot of stuff that could have gone into a landfill.

That's four full brown paper bags. Or a full seat at the Metrodome.

But if you're single and you're not recycling, and you and your friends don't produce as many empty wine and beer bottles as mine do, how can you start?

Timmons says just about everyone has paper to recycle. If - God forbid - you don't subscribe to the Pioneer Press, you still get junk mail and other papers in the mail. If you're concerned about identity security, remove the mailing label from the catalogs you receive or shred the paper. All types of paper can be recycled.

I have a lovely corner of my basement to stash my recyclables between pickups, but what if you're short on space?

"Just start with one material," Timmons suggests. Set up a space for that paper or the cans you're going to recycle. You really don't have any more material to store between garbage pickup days. "You've just got it in two smaller bins."

And focus on "waste-reduction strategies," Timmons says. Get your name off junk-mail lists, use a filtered water pitcher instead of buying bottled water, have a reusable mug at work, use reusable bags when you shop.

And look at the packaging. Those little 100-calorie snack packs are handy but have a lot of waste in packaging. Get a box of crackers or cookies, check the calorie count and make your own snack pack in a reusable container, Timmons suggests. Bonus: You'll find it's a lot cheaper.

And a bonus for me: When I count out the number of chips or crackers I can eat for 100 or 150 calories, it stops me from stuffing them into my face so quickly.

No more excuses. You may not have a next generation that has to deal with 11 Metrodomes full of trash, but you have family and friends who will outlive you, and there's just a limited space to share on the Earth.

Contact Single Female Homeowner at sfh@pioneerpress.com.

>> Via http://www.twincities.com/ci_14891971?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com. Pioneer Press 4/15/2010.