As anyone who has ever spent time with my three-year-old son Ray knows, his raison d’être is waste management. I’ve written before about his love of garbage trucks, but he is surprisingly well-versed in the recyclability of various materials, and he is quick (and loud) to chide you should you carelessly toss a scrap of paper into the garbage. We recently received a mailer from the Seattle Public Utilities that explained what can be recycled and what can’t and which had pictorial representations of the various materials. We couldn’t tear him away from it.
Lately, he’s been studying the numerical codes that identify the type of plastics objects are made from, and he can tell you with reasonable accuracy whether or not an object can be recycled. He can’t (yet) tell you if something is polyethylene terephthalate or polyvinyl chloride, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
The other day, he saw a recycling symbol on a cardboard box, and after a short pause he asked me: “Why do they put recycling symbols on cardboard when all cardboard can be recycled.”
I’m not positive if it’s true that you can recycle all cardboard; nevertheless, I found his level of logic pretty astonishing.
I told him it was just to remind people to recycle cardboard, and he seemed satisfied with that.
At this rate, he’s going to be smarter than me when he turns five.
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Posted by: HelloWorld | April 29, 2007 12:42 AM