Since I last wrote about my efforts to find inexpensive ways to go green, there have been many changes around Casa de Dingo. First of all, there’s the landfill in the kitchen. Although both Mr. Dingo and I did not think we had much to recycle in the way of glass, cardboard, and aluminum, we crammed a recycling bag into a tight space in our Lilliputian kitchen. Once we decided to recycle, I become maniacal about it. The first week, we filled two bags. Two! We patted ourselves on the back and cooed to each other, “You’re so Green! No, you’re so Green!” We even engaged in Public Displays of Environmentalism, asking stores and restaurants we frequent whether they recycled. It was actually quite sickening. But environmentally friendly! Until the pile of refuse came crashing down.

New York City collects recyclables only one day a week. So, for several days we were stepping over jelly jars, cans dispossessed of their chickpeas, and boxes siphoned of yummy sugary cereal goodness during late night snack attacks. And the wine bottles? Let’s not go there. Let’s just say that I use it for cooking. You know how that goes:

1. Mix dry ingredients. Take a sip of wine.
2. Add four eggs, mixing after each. Mix. Sip. Mix. Sip. Mix. Sip. Mix. Chug.
3. Add 1/3 cup canola oil. Hold measuring cup at eye level. Wonder why it won’t stop shaking. Pour 1/4 cup 3/4 cup Oh, hell, just eyeball it and have another drink.

It didn’t take long for the kitchen to look like the crew from Hoarders was going to place a dumpster outside the door and hand me a shovel. By the end of the week, I was so sick of stepping over Cap’n Crunch’s stupid smile that I wanted The Soggies to win.

Being the ever resourceful Dingo, I found a way to reuse some of the recyclables. Here’s a tip:

1. Choose two cans from the rubble by sink. 15 oz. bean and corn cans work well.
2. Get a long piece of string. Don’t reuse the one that tied up the pork loin. That’s just nasty. Rummage through the junk drawer for the kitchen twine you bought to tie up newspapers for recycling but found it easier instead to cancel your subscription.
3. Insert the string through the corn can.
4. Insert other end of string through the empty can of beans.
5. Give this as a gift to your siblings’ children, telling them how environmentally conscious it is to make Toys That Teach from trash.
6. Cancel the subscriptions to gay men’s magazines you never ordered when they mysteriously begin to appear in your mailbox.

I haven’t found a way to reduce the clutter that makes our kitchen look like a showroom for Ms. Havisham’s Interior Decorating Service, but once I saw how much recyclable garbage Mr. Dingo and I accumulated in such a short period of time, it reaffirmed my commitment to recycle as much as possible. And we’ve learned a few things over the past month:

1. One stop shopping: Place all items that can be redeemed for deposits in a bag separate from the other recyclables and tie it loosely at the top. Sure, it’s an extra step but it prevents people from ripping the bags open and strewing garbage all over the sidewalk leaving the street looking like the set of Escape from New York. Oh snap! IMDB says that there’s a re-make scheduled for 2011. Really, folks, some things do NOT need to be recycled. Anyway, sorting your redeemable items from the rest of the pile is a nice thing to do for people who count on redeemed nickels and dimes to eat.
2. Rinse bottles, cans, and jars. No need to issue an open invitation to rodents and other nibbling nuisances. In addition, one dirty item can contaminate the entire bag. Any mold, insects, or other non-recyclable additions and the recycling center will reject the entire bag like a supermodel at a Star Trek convention.
3. Holy crap, are you an alcoholic or what?

Does recycling fit my goal of finding easy, cost-effective ways to go green? Kind of. There’s the initial outlay for the recycling bags and the time it takes to sort the glass, plastic, aluminum, and cardboard. And, if you’re like me, you’ll have a large bag just filled with corks. But what’s more burdensome is making sure that one of us remembers which day the recycling is collected. Having two weeks of recycling piled in the kitchen does not a happy Dingo make. It doesn’t make maneuvering around the small space easy or efficient, nor is it a good match with finishing off that bottle of vodka. But it has made us think about the food we buy, the packaging it comes in, and how inconvenient it is to ever finish eating it. A low-energy walk-in freezer may be the answer.