Glass jars . . . they seem to multiply. Pickles, condiments, jams, jelly, We washed them out when empty and placed them in a blue container which we carried out the curb every two weeks for pickup. This changed for us at the beginning of the year. My wife Peggy gave me instructions on where to take it, but questions arose.
I wrote PPeck of the City of Tacoma about glass recycling because the only 2021 instructions mentioned delay of the original pickup of glass every two weeks and the location of where to drop off the glass (the Co-op on Pearl and North 46th for Northenders like us). My wife and I drove around the block of the co-op and saw no information.
Correspondence:
Me: Northend. What’s the story? I saw no instructions and there was no one to ask at the co-op.
Preston Peck: Good morning, Don. What sort of instructions were you looking for?
Me: Dump here? Glass as is? Jars still labeled? Throw your glass up into the big green container? Did you clean out all the food? Stuff your stuff into the gray plastic buckets? Yes, this is the place to leave your glass? Be careful not to break glass? Break glass if you need to or want to? Hold fart and grin? You know ,just some indication that things are being right . . . at the right place . . . at the right time.
Preston Peck: The glass drop-off container is located on the southeast corner of the Co-op parking lot. I’ve circled the area in red below. It’s noted by signage for parking that states those parking stalls are for glass drop-off. You will follow the same rules as you would when we picked up glass curbside. Please make sure that the glass is empty, clean, and dry. No caps or lids. No need to remove labels. The purple container has five, eight-inch portals on either side of the container. Place the glass into any of the portals. Please let me know if you have any other questions. (an aerial shot of the co-op and the parking lot was included)
Ahhhhhhh, enlightenment. We had missed the purple container and saw no signs when we turned on to North 45th from North Pearl. We found many containers on the opposite corner, but that apparently was all from the Co-op.
We drove into the parking lot and parked right by the collection container. You can feed it glass in its own portholes and home batteries (like for flashlights, and smoke alarms) in there separate collector on the end of the container.
Soon, Peg was stuffing one or two jars at a time into the small portholes which are located on both sides of the glass container. I’m guessing that the small portholes are to keep people from getting rid of plate glass, commodes, sinks, etc. It also stops the collection of jug jars and figurines as well, however.
In case you arrive still wondering about what goes in the containers, there is a sign on the side that helps explain what is acceptable.
If you live in Tacoma, you can write Preston for more details if you need them (peck), for Lakewood you can visit WLI Recycling Inc – 10529 Lakeview Ave SW, Lakewood, WA 98499.
For more Glass Drop-Off Locations | Pierce County, WA – visit the Official Website – co.pierce.wa.us/1539/Glass-Drop-Off
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
Check out the Lakewood Fire Station on Steilacoom Blvd for possible glass disposal.
Lynn,
Thanks for commenting.
Good to know there is another outlet for glass recycling.
Thanks for sharing.
Don
Other (more broad public policy) questions which might be asked include:
1. what do full life cycle studies show about the cost effectiveness of glass recycling?
2. what economic and environmental effects occur as a result of several hundred thousand customers delivering their recycle glass to a few locations, rather than a few dozen or hundred trucks picking it up.
3. what effect does the “new way” have on our desire to minimize traffic and COVID contacts?
4. What calculation was made of the switch from city cost to citizen cost?
5. what is the value of invested (some would say wasted) customer time and gasoline to do so?
Ken,
Thanks for commenting.
Great questions for a follow up article. Now if I could only work moss into the story . . .
Thanks for sharing.
Don
Sorry Don, rolling on to glass gathers no moss.
So thrilled you have such a cool bin to attract the Northendlenders to the proper spot. In Lakewood we have been w/o glass pick-up for years and I am also very grateful for our less-than-artistically-correct bins at the fire station. We don’t have any really cool covers for our telephone and utility boxes either. People here just run them over anyway.
All kidding aside, I am thrilled to recycle glass and am waiting for the world to give up on plastics and aluminum cans and return to glass!
There is nothing in plastics or cans that is good for the human body. Anyone who is old enough to remember the taste of of an ice-cold Coke or beer out of a frosty glass receptacle would know there is nothing better. So what was so wrong with having to return each bottle for a nickel? Now we pay big bucks for someone else to do it!
Nancy,
Thanks for the comments. You brought back memories of growing up on Ponders Corner. My parents owned La Casa Motel and we had a coke machine. It was the kind where you made your choice and then slid the bottle you wanted along a track and then pulled it out. Eventually, we also sold RC (Royal Crown) Cola. They seemed so huge (16 oz.). On hot days I would put one in the freezer . . . a couple of times I had to clean up the frozen mess, but over all they were wonderful. I began renting rooms in the seventh grade when my parents left to do shopping or go for a Sunday drive. My parents paid me, so, I always had money. I augmented the motel work with picking up pop bottles and beer bottles along the backroad to McChord and returning them to the market in Ponders. I was also the back-up paper boy for the regular kid who was a Seventh Day Adventist. This meant I delivered on Saturday to cover him. Any excess newspapers where thrown in Clover Creek! I delivered to a couple of places just inside the gate at McChord. The gate had a Coke machine that had the little stubby Coke bottles. What were they five ounces? Again, it was a nice pick-me-up on a hot Saturday pedaling my J.C. Higgins English Racer with a rebel flag flying from the handlebars and delivering papers mostly along the highway from Ponders to Bridgeport way. I think of the highway as Memory Lane.
Thanks for sharing and bringing back glass bottle memories. I’m working on part-two about glass and recycling.
Don
Wow, what a wonderfully detailed memory you are blessed with. I grew up in California and moved here when I was 13 so I missed those days here, however I’m kind of reliving them at this time as I live in the home of a builder in Lakeview who was pretty much responsible for starting all of the homes around here. He also owned the Home Motel on that strip. When I invaded the basement I found all sorts of things from those times and he kept every piece of paper involved with that business and apartments as well. We traveled up and down the West Coast at least yearly as my oldest brother was still living up here and my father was stationed in California. What a treat it was to stay in one of those motels occasionally rather than sweating away in the car with no air conditioning and no col
d pop!
This neighborhood will disappear soon. The house I live in is 1936 and is on a little over an acre which is unheard of here. I’ve lived here for 43 years and it was sold last year and my heart is broken. Maybe I’ll end up in one of those little motel rooms again. Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Nancy Copeland
I think The Home was painted white and was just east of Clover Creek and a bunch of bushes. I had a friend there who had polio. We put together model tanks and such. He had an older friend, Little Bill (who also had polio) of Little Bill and the Blue Notes, whom I met later in life. I think the only break my parents got was meetings of the local motel owners. If you had to move into a motel, I wouldn’t recommend any on the strip. A few years ago I had a friend who complained he needed an adventure. I told him to pick my wife and I up the next Friday. His wife joined us . . . and I took them on a little trip . . . the place were I first told Peg I loved her, the gravel pit where we would park and the place where I asked her to marry me, and finally the parking lot of La Casa Motel (we honeymooned there . . . my parents still owned it). We sat there for a minute or two and and I said, “Do you know why this is an adventure just sitting here?” He shrugged his shoulders and I said, “Because we could be shot any minute.” Someone had been right there a week before. Quickly we got out of there . . . The last motel I stayed in around Lakewood was the one right across from the old theatre. – https://thesubtimes.com/2019/06/13/a-room-with-a-review-relaxing-in-a-lakewood-hotel/ – Nice chatting. Don