The Public Recycling Option

I think recycling is a the right thing to do. 

  I wish it was more convenient to recycle in rural areas.  When I visit a city and see green, blue, and brown garbage bins on the curb my heart goes pitter-pat.  Over the years,  I have recycled with various degrees of success. Limited success.  I am most diligent with aluminum cans.  I drink more diet coke than any human should so I make myself feel somewhat better about my vice by recycling the cans.
The options for recycling in Grant County mostly involve being your own garbage man.  I used to have to drive my cans 20 miles to Moses Lake and I got paid a pitance for the effort. The price of the aluminum did not off set the cost of the gasoline. In addition to that, I had to wonder if the cost to the environment was more for the 40 mile round trip than was the benefit of the recycling.  Saving cans until I had to go to Moses for some other reason was viable but resulted in garbage bags of cans having to be hidden around the house between trips.
For a couple of years now there have been large recycling containers near the bus station in Ephrata. For a while they would come and go, depending on complaints to the city council about things like broken glass in the area. Those issues appear to be worked out and I have been taking my cans to the drop site regularly since I have to go to town (10 miles each way) everyday to work.  I don't get paid for the aluminum but I don't care about that. 
I am going to try and step up my efforts. Besides aluminum, there are drop off containers for kitchen glass, cardboard and newspaper. No plastics. My plan is simple. I'll put three cardboard boxes next to the kitchen garbage and sort things out, and take the garbage to the drop every Friday. I would like to buy pretty green, blue, and brown plastic containers with recycle logos and labels on the sides to sort into.  Then how much would I have to recycle to justify buying the plastic containers? What if the containers were made out of recycled plastic?  I don't know. What I do know is that I have grandchildren and doing nothing just doesn't feel right.