Ground Scores and Recycling

Journal Entry: Coinage 12/30/09 = $1.32; coinage 12/31/09 = $1.25; coinage 1/1/10 = $3.02; coinage 1/2/10 = $3.22; Average weight = 174.7; Total glass bottles = 19; Total Ground Scores = 16

Feature Entry: Ground Scores and Recycling

This blog entry is about “ground scores,” the non monetary things that the MoneyWalker drags home, and how this habit is good for society’s need to recycle. Wendy Bumgardner writes a professional blog for About.com, the New York Times group of professional bloggers. Her blog is about fitness walking. It was she that provided the term ground scores and ask her readers to report some examples. CmAmy responded with this comment which framed the issue about walking and recycling:

I've been dogwalking for years at 4 am, so, yes I've found lots of coins, dollar bills, even some tens and twenties. But my best finds have all been "from the Curb". Maybe it doesn't count, as they can certainly be traced to their owners, who put them out to the trash! My favorite is a beautiful metal statue, fashionably rusted, that I call my "harvest lady" - she is wearing a sunflower styled hat and holding a rounded pumpkin dish. She looks great in my fall garden every year. I've also picked up an old scrolled wrought iron chair that only needed a bit of soldering, a farm bench, an antique bookcase, my list goes on and on. Walking is evidently great for recyclers!

The featured photo of a door handle is a recent ground score. I found it on a discarded door beside a trash dumpster. Later I retrieved the door with my pickup truck, removed the handle and lock mechanisms, and then installed them on a Katrina damaged door on the ground level entrance of my New Orleans home. Home Depot displays the same “KwikSet” unit for $129.00 dollars. Rather than end as clutter at land fill, the lockset is now a totally functioning part of the MoneyWalker’s homestead. Now a little paint and we are good to go.

By Googling “the value of recycling”, the following comment was found:

By transforming waste materials into usable resources, recycling reduces landfill and conserves resources, provides a way to manage solid waste while reducing pollution, conserving energy, creating jobs and building more competitive manufacturing industries.

Other issues included “living green,” “recyclable waste,” “rechargeable batteries,” “composting,” “electronic waste,” “cigarette butts,” “junk mail,” and “emissions.”

The MoneyWalker is not sure about how to interpret the CO2 greenhouse effect data. It may be true that the so-called greenhouse blanket in the atmosphere that keeps our planet warm is growing too thick—that we are becoming too warm. Moreover, according to some, the deforestation, automobile emissions, Freon escapes, and other emissions are radically increasing the warming process. The data, whether fact or fiction is beyond my understanding, but personal recycling is good citizenship, even if greenhouse warming is just a natural cycle in the historical pattern of climate change.

MoneyWalker