The recycling program in Ruston isn't that good.  There is a good place to go to deposit all the newspapers, aluminum cans and office paper.   They have a center set up in the Walmart parking lot and they don't take plastics which I have a lot of.  We don't get the newspaper or buy soft drinks in aluminum cans. Plastics is all we have.  There is only one site in town where you can take plastics and that is at the grocery store.  They have a tiny, tiny box where you can deposit the plastics and it's a tiny hole only big enough to put the plastic 2 liter bottles in.   Not big enough to put the milk cartons in.  I'm really digusted that my town is not doing more to promote recycling.

I can recycle many things here in central Texas.

We have curbside weekly pick-up for newspaper, aluminum, steel, glass, plastics 1 & 2, and brush and compostable materials.

I take my paper, including newspaper, white, colored, cardboard, corrugated cardboard, paperboard, envelopes with or without windows, things with staples, shredded, not shredded, etc., to the university recylcing center when we get a full container. They sort it all themselves, so it's easy for me to collect. The students use the sorting to learn about various types of recycling.

CLothes I recyle by handiing down, or donating to charity, or if they are in really poor condition, they get turned into other items.

And Freecycle is big here, with lots of things listed often. A couple of weeks ago, a mobile home was listed!

Here in North Texas it's a little better than some of the post I've read.  When I lived in town we had curbside but we had to pay for it!! Of course they stopped charging for it right after we moved to the country 5 years ago.  So now I take newspapers, most plastics, tin cans, soda cans, glass, cardboard and shredded paper about once a month.  My husband hated that we had to pay for it before but when we moved and he took some stuff to the dump and saw it he decided that maybe I wasn't crazy after all!!

I really think there should be more.  When I see all the stuff people bring to the recycling center I wonder how much doesn't get recycled.  It has to get better or we will eventually be buried in trash!

Our town just started a new recycling program we have a 95 gallon bin provided by the town that gets picked up every other week(curbside).  almost everything can go in the bin(plastics paper, tin foil, cans, glass)

 before that we had these tiny little bins maybe like 10 gallon sized I don't know how I ever made due with that this week's pick up is the frst full 2 weeks since the program started and my 95 gallon bin is almost full it'll probably be full by trash day

In Salida, Colorado they recycle just about everything but you have to drive to the area and separate everything.  I have five stations in my kitchen - plastics 1-7, all glass, newspaper, aluminum & tin, cardboard & brown paper bags, all paper - includes office paper, junk mail, magazines, yellow pages, etc.  Whenever I have to make a trip into town, I always pack my recycling.  We take our trash to the dump because we would never generate enough trash for a weekly pickup.  I estimate we take one trash bag (50 gal) every month & a half. 

Have curbside recycling here in my area and most of the local cities have a drop off location.  Some of the schools and churches in the area also do paper recycling with Paper Retriever http://paperretriever.com.

As for electronics recycling it's pretty poor in the area. Alway's see people setting out tv's,computer moniter's, etc every week on garbage pickup day.

originally when I moved here I was resistant to my husband fussing about rinsing garbage that ended up in landfill anyway, because that was his experience in MD.In the woods of NH I am still an outcast for driving a non-hybrid SUV,buying non bamboo hardwoods, & refusing to back a healthcare plan we cannot afford,but the liberal agenda has converted me on this issue.We have recycling for all your usuals,but not wrapping paper,don't let em catch you with even a scrap, but a gaurd posted at the household trash dumpster,high prices on construction or yard sale items have got me rinsing bottles,& separating like a wild woman,best thing they have is"the swap shop". This is tables of goods that r placed for the purpose of re use.I have gotten ride on toys,furniture,books,& most recently a beautiful deer with a metallic glaze for the front porch, nicer than the one I was gonna buy, so this to me is the best area in recycling,also there is the fall backdrop of the mountains.

The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 5,036 groups with 8,905,485 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns and thus keeping good stuff out of landfills.

Well, I tried to download and paste our local guidelines, but apparenlty my computer skills (as well as my typing skills) need work.  Anyway, the local trash hauler accepts almost anything recyclable, including used motor oil and batteries.  There is no charge, and they pick-up streetside every other week - I suspect we would be considered rural.   We have three bins, garbage, green waste (which I don't use as I compost), and recyclables.  There is no charge for the recycling, but the other two are about $35 total a month for a pick-up every week.  I usually just bag my newspaper and drop it off at a sheltered workshop in town rather than give it to the trash company.  I live in Northern CA

Meldster:  You might want to look at this website.  I haven't tried this as I have pelnty of room poutside, but a lot of people claim it works just fine.

http://www.greenamerica.org/livinggreen/worms.cfm

As far as waste goes, I haven't tried to compost yet, since our backyard is so small, and we don't have much organic waste, but that may be next, if I can find some small system that would work and be impervious to small animals.

Phoenix has curbside recycling for paper, plastic, aluminum and steel cans. We used to have to look on the bottom of plastics because they only took 1, 2 and 6. But recent guidelines have us putting in everything except grocery bags.

All the grocery stores take back bags. But there are church groups that use the grocery bags to crochet sleeping mats for the homeless. (You can find instructions online.)

There's a site online where you can request not to receive updated telephone books.

There's a company not far from my house that recycle used electronics. They do pickups from businesses but individuals have to drop off their stuff. They even accepted a dead vacuum cleaner from me.