First Week's Success

Thanks to everyone for your posts, comments, and participation last Saturday. The first week of recycling pick up was a success! I drove to the Wetumpka Recycling Center and easily got our multiple bags into the hands of the experts. I've noticed that the simple act of doing this has already caused me to be more aware of the items that I normally throw away. I'm now saving all newspapers, printer paper, and the endless piles of junk mail that we receive to take on the next round of recycling.

A few notes on what we saw during the day.

• Everyone who participated did an excellent job of keeping like kind items separated and as far as I could tell no one included anything that the recycling center could not accept.



• I did write down a list of what they will regularly accept at the recycling center:

All Paper: News Paper, Printer Paper, Magazines, etc.

Aluminum Products

Steel Cans

Plastic #1 and #2

Ni-Cad Batteries

Cardboard

• However, the Wetumpka Recycling Center will not accept the following:

Glass and Styrofoam

In addition, after reading over comments on the blog and emails I think there are probably a few things we should do sooner than later while we still have nice weather.

1. Let's consider another neighborhood cookout. I know May is often a busy time for families with children getting out of school so if these dates are not good we can move this out to a later time. However, once the summer begins it's often much harder to catch people when they are not traveling or on vacation. I'm assuming that weekends are better for most people so how about either Saturday May 9 or May 16. We're open to suggestions on where and how to do this so please email if you are a great host/party planner or a whiz on the grill and we can start to coordinate our efforts. GrandRidgeForest@gmail.com



2. This could be discussed at the cookout but I hear many people interested in the idea of an entrance sign. I have always been disappointed that we do not have something in place. I have been informed that there are legal issues that would require a neighborhood wide collective effort and agreement to move forward on gaining access to a small piece of property to install a sign. This is something that any legal experts in our neighborhood as well as real estate professionals could help us to better understand.

Please keep in mind that our next recycling pick up date is scheduled for May 2. Same idea as last time, feel free to leave any of the above mentioned items on your curb in separate bags and we'll pick them up between 9:30 and 10:00 AM. If you have any neighbors who missed out on the first week or who have not yet gotten involved in the conversation here please encourage them to do so.

As always questions, comments, and ideas are most welcome. We would like to build a mailing list of those who are interested so that we can send email reminders or notifications when the blog is updated or to inform people about upcoming events. If you would be willing to share your email address for this purpose please simply send an email to GrandRidgeForest@gmail.com and state in the subject something like "sign me up to receive updates". I can assure you that your email will not be abused or sold to any advertising agencies.

Hope to see and meet some of you out and about over the weekend.

All the Best,

DJ, Mara, and Eli Holden