The E-Recyclers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: There was ice in all the buckets this morning when I went out to feed and heavy frost on the fields, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day after all. I was able to spend most of it doing silly little chores that just need to be done—checking fences, washing feed sacks, running errands and taking a TV and computer monitor to town for the E-Recycling truck. I told my neighbor I’d take their stuff, so I had a pretty good load in my little Honda Insight. When I pulled up, the guys joked that my car would just barely fit in their crusher. Not my car! I consider it a classic, an antique hybrid. It’s kind of appalling how much stuff we buy and throw out, and neither my neighbor nor I are trendy folks. When I buy something and it breaks, I get it fixed if at all possible, so my car is a 2001 and this computer a 2004. Only have had one cell phone and all it does is make phone calls, but that’s been enough so far. Still, this year the microwave gave up and we had a vacuum cleaner that was just a lemon from the start. All the stuff the E-Recyclers collect goes to a giant crusher in St. Louis and gets broken down, the metals separated out and sold. Hope they make enough money to keep it all out of the landfill.