Got Junk?

Let’s talk about biz, but not real estate biz today. This time I’m talking about the broken portable A/C in your garage, the old wobbly bookshelf stored in between the houses and the endless amounts of cardboard that you got with all those amazon deliveries and the new beds you ordered. What to do with those? How about the lawn mower that died three years ago and all the other stuff that you don’t know what to do with? The stuff that won’t fit in your garbage, or maybe it doesn’t belong in the garbage let alone the recycling bin.

In the ideal world we would have less and less garbage. Appliances would be repaired instead of discarded and those unwanted things would find a home with someone else. Unfortunately, it tends to be more cost effective to replace instead of repair, and even on buy nothing sites people aren’t looking for cheap furniture that is wobbly and chipped in every corner, so what to do with all that stuff.

I would love to tell you that we have no trash, that we have been able to master this, and are able to recycle, downcycle and upcycle everything. That our four-legged compost takes care of all organic waste and that our garbage bin gets emptied by WM only once a month and even then, it’s almost empty. The reality is that we could do better. We should do better, and we have way too much stuff that we need to get rid of and this is a story about how to dispose of old appliances and recyclable materials properly.

After offering your junk to your neighbors, friends and community, the answer for the next step is not dumping at the end of that road that no one uses. The correct answer is a transfer station. King County has several transfer stations that willingly accept what you no longer need. What can be recycled or reused will be recycled or donated to charities, what needs to go to the landfill will go to the landfill. Houghton Transfer station in Kirkland takes both recyclables, and garbage. However, they do not take appliances, construction waste, fluorescent light bulbs, yard waste or clean wood, and due to space restrictions, your recyclables will be sorted elsewhere. The better option, worth a little fieldtrip, is the award-winning Bow Lake Recycling and Transfer Station in Tukwila. The Bow Lake facility is an experience as it’s so well organized, and one might even say beautiful. The first time we went there, I was amazed by this facility.

Good to know:

• All loads need to be secured 
• Cardboard has to be recycled as it is not accepted as garbage 
• Pre-sort everything before going to Bow Lake as they have assigned areas for everything
• Reusable materials (bikes and textiles) are donated to local non-profits 
• Visit the website to see what is and is not accepted at different locations
• Houghton Recycling and Transfer Station
• Bow Lake Recycling and Transfer Station