For the past several years we've had our boys doing chores around the house for a small allowance. The goal besides distributing the household workload was to teach the boys someresponsibility towards doing work as wall as managing their money. Honestly, it's worked wonders!
One of the bi-weekly chores is to sort the plastic bottles from the aluminum cans. Once a few bags has accumulated we take a trip to our local recycling drop-off to turn them in for cash. What better way to show the boys the value of recycling, right?
So today - Monday, I tell the boys to get the cans and bottles in the car so we can go turn them in. We head down to the Albertson's by our house where Re-Planet has a recycling drop-off location.
As we pull up, I can see the two big bins have the doors closed and as we pull closer I see a sign stating that they're closed because the bins are full. A bit frustrating after putting the sticky, leaking soda can filled bags in the back of my car, but we head South to the City of Carlsbad's recycling facility off of Faraday. I can't believe my eyes when we arrive to see a sign saying they're closed on Monday's.
I head North again as I had to make a stop at the Post Office anyway. I recall a recycling spot off of Tamarack next to the Sav-On Drugstore, right by the I-5 freeway. As we pull up, my youngest starts to giggle as he sees before me that it's closed as well. No sign explaining why, no business hours posted, no signage at all...just locked up tight. We continue to mail our packages and head over to the mall off Jefferson. I have to stop by Sports Authority. As I get closer I recall they had two self-serve recycling machines out in front of Stater Bros. grocery store. And as you can imagine by now...no luck. They'd replaced the machines with a water dispensing machine.
I was ready to quit at this point. Just thrown the dang things in the garbage can somewhere, and my older son reminded me of one last shot - the Re-Planet recycling facility next to Ralph's off of Oceanside Blvd, just East of the I-5 freeway. It was just over the hill, so why not. Heck, I'd already spent $10 on gas at $4.59/gallon trying to drop them off somewhere, what was another mile or two?
As we pulled into the lot, my son was elated, "they're open, they're open" he chipped. But as we got closer it turns out they're replaced the nice Hispanic man that ran this recycling center with two large bins and two self-serve machines. Oh well, a sign of the times I thought as we got out to feed the cans into the beast.
After an hour of driving, and literally five locations we were ready to get our $5.00 to give to the boys for their work.
***WARNING*** was what the little window said. As both machines were inoperable and jammed with something other than cans and bottles apparently. My boys looked at me not quite understanding when I told them to load the sticky bags back into the back of the car.
I was quiet for a bit on the drive home, reflecting on our adventure. My son, with his infinite wisdom said "it's tough to help take care of the environment isn't it Dad?" Yes it is, yes it is.
