Seasons - Weather & Shopping

01/21/12 - Temp in F

01/21/12 - Temp in C

This is a post I've been thinking about for a while because it was of course one of the first things I noticed, the difference in weather!

In my area of Australia (I'm just gunna say "Australia" for this post to save time but yes, I know it's hotter in QLD, NT and WA than in Vic :-P) it was basically HOT (Summer), warm (Autumn & Spring), and cold (Winter)...  Cold was anything under 20C (and I don't remember anything under 0C) and sometimes at night it would get down as low as 1C and that was just the world ending! But most of the time it basically felt like we only had two seasons... either warm, or kinda cold.

Foliage wise too, nothing really changed. I didn't noticed the plants really obviously dying off then "springing" back to life like I do here in the US. I noticed Autumn of course but we must just have a lot of evergreens near my house because I never noticed an extremely large amount of leaves. Everything basically stayed green all year round until it went brown in the heat of summer.

In a lot of towns here there's a "dumping" area for plants, lawn clippings etc so this past Autumn (okay it's called "Fall" more often in the US) we scooped them up and dumped them there. SO many leaves, about 4 truck-bed's full and it was a lot of work and I definitely felt it the next day!

Here in Iowa we definitely have all four seasons. Summer is HOT, Autumn is warm with the occasional cool breeze (and the leaves falling etc), Winter is FREEZING with snow, and Spring is warm but wet with all the snow melting then all the grass comes back green, and flowers bloom.

Summer gets ridiculously hot here in Iowa, but a humid hot which I personally think is worse in some ways and better in others. The dry heat in Australia is good in that you can often stand in the shade and not feel as hot, but this also means the risk of bushfires is greater. Here in Iowa there's no hiding, it's hot EVERYWHERE. The good thing about that though is window unit air conditioning units are really reasonably priced and actually really efficient. We have central air-conditioning as well (very spoilt) so our house is basically climate controlled which is wonderful :-) My husband once told me that it gets so humid because of all the crops (corn and soy) that boosts the moisture in the air.

It was only after my first full (and proper winter) when I finally realised what "Spring Cleaning" was and why it was necessary. Over Winter the house is all shut up of course and sealed with the heater running (in our case central heating with a humidifier running because the dry air from the heater makes me so itchy!), that's a lot of recycled air. When Spring hits you open all the windows and let the air circulate. You clean EVERYTHING to get rid of that "sealed up" and stale feeling and you throw out stuff you'd just been storing because you really don't want to go out for longer than you have to!

With the weather came another realisation, I don't own enough clothes! Well.. okay I didn't own enough variation of clothes, not to contend with the weather anyway :-P

I have to admit back in Australia I basically wore the same thing year round (only adding a jumper when cold) because the temperature didn't really alter all that much... pants (jeans) and a t-shirt... so I didn't really understand in movies how they would "pack away" clothes or buy clothes in seasons ("this is my winter wardrobe"). Why would you pack them away? Why would you buy multiple seasons of clothes? Seems a little pointless and expensive... WELL, now it all makes sense! I store my heavy winter coat, snow boots, beanies, winter gloves, long sleeved undershirt and all that because you only need it for 3 months of the year. As it starts to get cold you get those clothes out of storage, move your colder weather clothes to the front of the wardrobe and the summer clothes to the back.

That of course leads to SHOPPING for seasonal shopping. My jeans broke last summer and I went to go buy a new pair from a store I like to shop in and all I could find were capris or shorts or skirts but not a good range of full-length jeans. I had to wait until they came "back in season" before I could get proper new ones. I had to get cheap jeans that I hate but at least did the job.

I broke my sunnies last week and found out that those are seasonal as well, and found out my favourite shopping store (Kohls) is a seasonal shop so NO sunnies :-( Ended up located my sunnies (same as my broken ones) at Wal-mart. Thank goodness for Wal-mart hey!

They talk about times of the year in terms of seasons too. "I'm going to college in the Fall", movies are "out this summer"... I have to admit it takes me a second or two to calculate that :-P

Pop Can & Bottle Recycling... For Money!

Okay so I found it hard to find a heading that didn't just make it sounds like I'm talking about typical bottle and can recycling that we do in Australia, so hopefully you guys were attracted by the word money as something interesting/different and read this post! It's only going to be a short one (you all probably have realised by now that "short" is a relative term!) but seeing it's something I did today I thought I should get it out there before I forgot! As a heads up I'm probably going to use the term "can" a lot but assume I'm talking about bottles as well :D.

Today I took 240 cans to the "can center" and in return I was paid $12. Now you'd be forgiven for thinking I actually got paid to recycle, but that's not actually the case... not entirely anyway. I'm not profiting, I'm actually breaking even.

How's that you ask? Well, I can't remember whether it's the same in Australia, but cans and bottles here have this weird looking writing on them that usually includes a monetary amount like 5c or 10c. It's actually state codes with how much of a deposit you pay for the bottle or can. See pics below (p.s. the can one was a really hard photo to get clear!):

Soda Bottles Deposit/
Recycling codes

Codes on the cans

Receipt Showing Deposit Paid

So you can probably see that there are only a couple of states that are listed (CT, IA, HI, MA, ME, NY, OR, VT for 5c, MI for 10c and CA says CRV explained here http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/bevcontainer/ ). This means that if you buy a bottle or can in those particular states, you will PAY a "deposit" when purchasing the beverage (see my receipt above).

In order to get that deposit back you need to take the bottle or can to a redeeming center. Apparently legally the place you bought it from is supposed to accept the can back, but not all places are equipped to deal with it so will only take a 12 pack or a small amount, if they take any at all. That's why they have the "redemption centers".

Rules for Redeeming

There are rules for redeeming cans and bottles as well. The place I went to today gave me a list of rules (to the left). Every place probably has different rules. The place I used to go to (that has since closed down) would take 240 cans or 300 cans. You were paid 5c per can. Now here's the thing. They never actually counted the cans while you were there (that would take too long because it's by hand) so instead some places will go by the "height" of the bag (because the can bags are pretty standard in size/width and yes we usually pay for them, 75c at this new place). I actually found at the old place they didn't pay me for the 300 cans but I didn't know that at the time, it wasn't until I got home that I was told I should have been paid more ($15 as opposed to $12) which isn't a lot but can add up over the years!

At the new place they don't count them either but the lady told me they will only take 240 cans (or rather only pay for 240 cans but you can give them more, just won't be paid more) because people were cheating them and saying there was 300 when there was less. They trust you to have the right number of cans in the bag until you prove to be untrustworthy. She also told me that the companies who make the pop are the ones that pay them for the cans. They are paid 6c per can, they pay us 5c per can so their profit is 1c per can. Apparently since the old place closed they've been EXTREMELY busy handling the cans and have needed to hire on someone new to help (she told me that earlier that week in one day they had well over 70 people come in so $138 profit assuming all the bags were exactly 240 cans and not including bottles etc).

Processing the cans at the can center consists of people opening all the bags and sorting them into bags for their respective manufacturer to collect (and people don't tend to wash them so it's really sticky) . When I dropped off my bag there were 2 people sorting cans and there were a LOT of bags to sort. It'd be pretty good repetitive arm exercise though... I know because I had to sort through my cans into bags of 240. Fun fun!

On doing some research for this topic I actually came across some posts that talk about "can counting machines" that you empty your bag of cans into and it spits out a receipt that you take to the cashier who will give you the money for however many cans are on the receipt... of course I also read that homeless people camp out near some of those places and beg people for their receipt (but homeless people is actually a whole other post for another day)... so maybe counting the cans myself is better than dealing with the guilt (misplaced or not).

A friend asked me where I stored the cans. We have a breezeway and in that breezeway we have a cardboard barrel from my husbands father that a can bag fits into perfectly... other people have other methods of course). It's taking up a bit of the breezeway now only because I sorted the cans into separate bags but when those are gone it doesn't impede movement at all.

So there you go. Not everyone collects the cans and instead just throws them out (whether they don't have the storage space or they're above it). Some people actually collect the cans from other locations (bars, outside apartment complexes, if they're cleaners at businesses or schools) and actually add to their income in that way. Given I have collected 720 cans (or $36) in the last year+ (yes I was lazy redeeming them) that's actually, over time, a fair bit of money you're throwing in the trash. I know it drives my husband nuts but hey, I have $12 right now that I didn't have yesterday, and when I take the other 2 bags I sorted that'll be another $24. PLUS it saves space in the regular trash can :D

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little post. Now I'm off to spend my $12... nah it's bedtime, but thanks for reading :)

P.S. Here's a wiki page explaining the reason behind it for some states and countries if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation.