Ideal Bite

"With the power to recycle comes great responsibility."-Peter Parker (well, kind of). During the evolution of my recycling/composting know-how, I'm afraid I've unwittingly chucked at least a spoon or two in the wrong bin. Understanding the diff between what you can recycle, what you can compost, and what you have to trash is tricky, and doing it the wrong way can really throw a noncompostable fork into the works.

So practice. And there's no better place to practice than at work, where you at least occasionally eat takeout and deal with the detritus that comes with it (even if you do only take one napkin).

What's more, there's nothing like proper disposal to bring a team together. And it's OK to start small.

Just look at our eco-friends at WorldTeach (see photo), who started separating color paper from white paper after finding out the building's program recycles only white - they take the color stuff to a separate facility. They also bundle up to minimize energy use (instead of cranking the heat), avoid drinking from individual plastic water bottles...and, um, apparently shop at Trader Joe's. We're just plain proud to know ya.

-Jenifer Morgan...off to properly dispose of some email...