Every trash day I am amazed at the quantity of trash that people produce in one week. Many homes have five or even 10 large plastic bags. In Stockton Springs the cost to eliminate our refuse is $1 a bag. If you produce five or more bags a week you are spending $240 a year. Our average waste production is $4 a month. Two barrels $1 each twice a month.

How do I accomplish this feat without living in swill? We recycle, we burn our paper products (nonglossy) in our wood stove and during the summer we mulch most all kitchen waste. During the winter months I also burn some of our kitchen waste (animal fat and bones) in the wood stove.

It is a simple matter to rinse out a gallon milk jug, step on it, reducing its volume, then toss it in the recycle bin; tin cans and glass jars are treated similarly after removing the label. Leave junk mail in the trash at the post office. Catalogs that do come home can be tossed in the recycle bin, along with magazines and the like.

Recently, I had the clerk at the supermarket put my food order in paper bags. Surprisingly what would have taken almost 20 slippery plastic bags each holding only a couple of items was reduced to six neat and easily handable brown paper sacks. I have been born again; paper it will be henceforth. Cloth even better.

With landfills filling up we can all save a buck and the planet by recycling.

Leo H. Mazerall Jr.

Stockton Springs