Recycling in New Mexico

in California, I got real used to recycling virtually everything, as I wrote in WMail Issue #28 – golly, three years ago:
"Waste Not, Want Not" [Oct 2002]

but things are different in New Mexico, including recycling being tough or non-existant

— magazines are taken to the library in B-town

— newspapers and heavy cardboard and waste paper get hauled to L-town, whenever I take the 12-mile drive up there for shopping, etc

— there is NO deposit on soda cans in NM, but a commercial operation in a semi-trailer on Highway 314 pays something for aluminum, which gives the homeless and-or indigent a means of earning some cash by picking up roadside litter

— waste plastic & plastic bottles and tin cans and other metals are taken along on trips to Albuquerque (a 30-mile drive); the drop-off is just off the I-25 Freeway at a school parking lot, in a giant bin, the sign says open M-F 8-5

— I've heard that there is some place in Albuquerque that pays for plastic soda bottles, but haven't found it; nor have I found anywhere to take worn-out clothing, like Gospel Army or Goodwill, where really bad items are sold by them as rag-scrap and re-enter the system

— I have no yard waste; the front lawn is brown stubble since August, and a Landmark friend brought me a 'burn barrel' for the tumbleweeds in the back yard, the removal of which is good exercise

the trash pickup here is $45 a month, by the Waste Management monopoly, and I have not signed up with them: I take my little plastic bag – mostly teabags and coffee filters – and drop it in the trash at the gas station every week or ten days

P.S. – saw a sign on the road to B-town for what appears to be a local tradition: drop off your dead Xmas trees for recycle in a dirt lot next to a local auto dealer, and B-town will have them taken away, turned into chips or something; the pile was already as big as a bus