Recycling

Another weird thing is they don't really recycle here. Well it's more complicated. First, they do have a deposit on cans and bottles, including wine. So I guess this is supposed to encourage people to bring back their beer, soda, and wine. Which I don't mind doing, except I wonder if it really works. It's a good idea but it's a little annoying in the implementation. There's a little room/foyer in the outside of the grocery store where all those can/bottle recycling machines are set up.
The only thing is usually if you go in there: 1. at least one or more of the machines is out of order
2. the machines don't seem to accept certain bottles (I dunno, maybe I'm feeding them in wrong),
3. it usually smells pretty rank- imagine all the nasty beer bottles, etc. crap pulled from the trash, whatever smell, yuck
4. there's usually someone with like 2 giant garbage bags full of beer cans hogging up those machines.

But fortunately, you can just bring the stuff to the customer service counter and they'll give you back your 15 cents or whatever.

So this is all well and good for your glass and soda cans. But what, you may ask, about plastic and what about newspaper and cardboard?
In this city brochure thingee we picked up somewhere, they say "materials that are traditionally recycled (such as paper, tin cans, plastic, etc) are not separated from garbage in Ames. Instead, they are separated at the Resource Recovery Plant. The burnable trash is used as a source of fuel in place of coal....etc. Metals are separated and sold for recyling.

Wait, what??? So, the city of Ames does NOT want me to separate recyclable items because first, they are going to pick out the most profitable ones from my trash and sell them themselves? I don't know...this sounds weird.

Luckily there is another option. You can take your stuff yourself to the Ames Redemption Center. Save your soul and your recycling. Kidding... It's just for the recycling.
It's sort of like Construction Junction but much better maintained. Thankfully. CJ made me sort of aggravated and sad, because people would f- things up and throw all sorts of crappity crap in the wrong bins and just plain out crap. For example, last time I went there someone had thrown a LAMP in the paper recycling dumpster. I hate people like that.

The place here is pretty cool and it's all indoors, so no rain getting everything a mess.

So, YAY Ames redemption.