More guilt...

So remember the great photo organization project? Well, I have been merrily going through my photos, consigning bunches of them to "recycling." However, I am going to follow Regina Leeds' sage advice to put away my photo and cookbook projects for now and concentrate on the rest of my house (I guess I was too close to things to come to this conclusion myself...I can see myself offering the same kind of advice to someone else!). So I was putting away the photo boxes, containers of photos yet to sort, etc., and decided I'd better make sure that it is possible to recycle photos.

Guess what? It isn't. And I live in one of the most recycling-friendly cities in the U.S.!

According to Metro, the government agency in Portland responsible for recycling, photographs cannot be recycled because of the chemicals in the paper. So I've got one more thing to feel guilty about as I continue on my merry purging ways.

I've got one piece of good news, though. Portland has a place called SCRAP (the School and Community Reuse Action Project), to which I have yet to venture...since the last thing I need is more scraps!!! (My very crafty coworker/friend Amy told me about SCRAP! She likes exclamation points too!) It sounds like a very cool, fun place. One of these days I'm going to take a class there and perhaps use up some of my craft supplies! Anyway, I e-mailed SCRAP to see if they would be interested in old photos, on a whim.

The "creative reuse center manager" (wouldn't you love to have a title like that?) responded that they would take photos of animals, scenery, nature, art, etc. "Our customers aren't as interested in photos of people, houses, cars, and other more personal images." I think I'm going to take the lazy way out and not go through all the photos again, separating out the animals/scenery/nature ones, but I feel guilty about that too. From now on, though, I will start sorting. And will donate any upcoming purged photos to SCRAP. I've also developed a pile of photos to give away (to people who are in them), but I should probably do more of that now that I know I can't recycle them.