I would consider myself to have a fairly mild personality; however, there are a few things I’m pretty passionate about and well…recycling is one of these things. This most likely stems from growing up in the ridiculously crunchy granola eco friendly recycling obsessed Pac NW. Many Pacific Northwesterners have similar mentalities regarding recycling: you do it, you love it, not recycling isn’t an option, and if you throw something out that could be recycled and/or composted, you’re most likely going to hell. Here in Austin, there’s a similar mentality. Even my host family in Mexico was extremely pro-recycling.

So, the other day I was Facebook chatting with a friend, Ofir. I met Ofir this past summer when I was in Israel – he was one of the Israeli soldiers that joined our birthright trip. (And by the way, I know I haven’t blogged about my Israel trip yet…I’m still trying to sort out my thoughts; however, I will give away one spoiler alert – hands down, my favorite part of the entire trip was having the Israeli soldiers and students join our group. They provided an entirely different dynamic for the group and truly made an already incredible trip even more amazing. More on this later.).

While in Israel, I ended up having many conversations with our Israeli soldier and student friends about differences between life in the US and Israel, cultural differences, stereotypes we had of one another, etc. One day, we were walking down the street in Tel Aviv and I noticed this giant metal structure filled with plastic bottles. I realized I didn’t know much about recycling in Israel, so I asked Ofir about it.

He said that although the concept of recycling was catching on, it still was fairly new and not completely accepted/prioritized. Ofir asked me about recycling where I’m from so I gave him a brief overview. He then asked me about the water bottle I had (it was one of those Nalgene-style bottles) – I explained the concept of one reusable water bottles vs. continually recycling plastic bottles. After my overview and this water bottle conversation, I pretty much assumed he viewed me as some crazy tree hugging crunchy granola composting hippie earth child. (:

Anyway, back to my original topic of conversation – my Facebook chat with Ofir. So, during our chat, the following conversation happened. I know this might make me appear to be a super crunchy granola and well…yeah, I guess it’s totally true. Perhaps it’s silly to get so excited about something like recycling plastic bottles, but well…I don’t think so! When I read when he wrote, I was pretty much bouncing out of my seat with excitement!!! Here’s our conversation:

 What with you? Still saving our planet? :))

 haha what do you mean by that??

 Just for you to know I bought a green bottle for water

 YAY!!! That makes me so happy!!! I love recycling (:

 That you doing great job! Haha yes!

 I love it!

 Even more, I told all my soldiers not to throw their plastic bottle

 (: !!!!!!!!!

 And now we have this big place we save all the bottles and recycle

 (:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is so awesome!!! You’re saving the world now too!!!