The joys of single-stream recycling teach kids difficult lessons on saving money.
Today I packed my car with all the recycling bins and headed off to the dump. My son came with me on a whim–and what a great thing it turned out to be. He saw I paid nothing to get into the dump, then he helped empty the baskets and bins, and on the way home, since I had a captive audience, I thought I’d let him know how much money we are saving thanks to Fairfield’s single-stream recycling program (here’s the link to a document that clearly tells you what you can and cannot recycle).
“So, you know all that garbage we just recycled? We used to pay to get rid of that stuff at the dump. But now since this new thing called single-stream recycling, we don’t have to pay to get rid of all that,” I forged ahead, knowing full well he didn’t read my prior post on hauling garbage. “So, you know how much money people pay to get rid of their garbage?”
“Uh, no,” said my 12-year-old as he was playing with our family iTouch.
“Well, some of our neighbors who have those garbage trucks pick up their garbage pay over $500 a year to have that truck pick up, we pay $120 a year, and we will probably pay around $60 a year now because we are using single-stream recycling,” I paused.
Silence as he processed this information.
“You mean people pay $500 a year to get rid of garbage?” he was incredulous. “That’s just stupid!”
Ah, lesson learned…
~Marilyn, TFF
Two Frugal Fairfielders 
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