OK…I completely admit that I’m a full month late on this.

I totally missed this when I read through the July/August Focus online a month ago. And I give complete credit to my wife for uncovering this big change in our recycling program.

Actually, I’m not sure why the city sort of buried this announcement. Someone could run for city commission purely based on making this change! So what the heck am I talking about? (Well…those of you that carefully read your Focus [which JUST showed up in hard copy yesterday - only a month late!] will already know)

Under the headline that we’ve got a new sanitation company handling our recycling, we find this HUGE change in little print…

• The program will now accept plastics numbered “1″ through “7″ as well as plastic bags

Whhaaa! That’s right! So start throwing (almost) all your plastics in the bin! No more swearing at huge “5″ and “6″ bottles and then attempting to cram them into an already bursting yellow Decatur garbage bag! And no more hauling your plastic bags to Publix for “recycling”.

…And before someone else says it, especially regarding plastic bags…its better not to use them at all. (There are unanswered questions about whether many of them are actually recycled – perhaps a question for our new sanitation company?) Its better to use reusable bags, which are already much more popular than they were six months ago.