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Seneca Lake, June 1, 2010

Paying attention to how your trash piles up is quite an educational experience. Being so far out in the country made pick-up a challenge and I found myself frequently being educated.

Taking it into Ithaca was the smelly solution. This town is wild. Everybody composts everything. The coffee shops have compost bins. You're compelled to recycle anything that can be. The grocery stores have recycling cans. There's easy access to the bottle deposit refund center, which is still wild to me as a PA native. Some folks embrace this refuse responsibility as a part of life in Ithaca, others tell me it's a bothersome social-guilt policy.

I imagine that the numbers of farmers and size of the county is the reason for having a facility like this so easily accessible. The compound is for the public to drop trash and recycling, though they're only open limited hours every day.

I was scolded for taking this photo. You can't take snapshots of anything without being presumed a terrorist these days.