In the 1980s, my grandparents in Seattle’s Wedgwood neighborhood ran a tight ship. The Seattle Times and the Seattle PI in one bin. Tin cans in another. Aluminum in a third. Glass sorted by color, clear here, green and brown there. I don’t think they missed a week.
It was work. And it worked. Every bit of it had a buyer down the road.
Seattle didn’t start recycling to win an award. Most people don’t know this, but in the mid-1980s, the city’s own landfills at Midway and Kent Highlands shut down after groundwater contamination. They eventually became cleanup sites. Suddenly, all the garbage had to go to Cedar Hills in King County, rates jumped, and the city needed to shrink the pile fast. Recycling wasn’t a movement. It was math. Curbside recycling launched in 1988, and within a few years, Seattle was the national poster child. Reporters flew in from everywhere to write about us. We were very proud of ourselves. We still are…