FLOWERY BRANCH — Putting together your own recycling station at home can be done easily with cardboard boxes or a more expensive unit. But either way you are helping Mother Nature.

"You work it into your life, you make it convenient," said Linda Dietz, a recycler and Master Gardener. "This (recycling station) is right outside my kitchen door. You don’t have to get so fancy — you can use paper bags."

Dietz has bins for glass, plastics, metal, newspaper and cardboard in her garage, which she then takes weekly to the Hall County Recycling Center.

"We try to buy things that are recyclable," she said. "We think about the fact that glass is recyclable and the most likely to be recycled. I try not to buy things in containers that I can’t recycle."

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that recycling redirects millions of tons of waste away from landfills and incinerators and helps reduce deforestation and the production of greenhouse gasses in the United States.

In 2006 recycling, including composting, diverted 82 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators. This was up from 34 million in 1990, according to www.epa.gov.

Rick Foote, the Natural Resources Coordinator for the Hall County Public Works Department, uses his own method at home.

"In my garage, I built a recycling bench and I use curbside bins ... they are about 18 gallons in volume and I have a couple of those and a couple of smaller bins and it has a hinged lid," he said.

The 6 to 7-foot-long bench holds bins for mixed containers (glass, plastic bottles and jars), one for magazines and books, one for cans (steel and aluminum), one for newspaper and one for mixed paper, including junk mail and cereal boxes.

"I actually have another bin for mixed paper, which most people do not," Foote said. "We only accept mixed paper here at the main recycling center. Technically it’s called paperboard in the industry or box board."

Foote added that most any storage box can be used to separate the items for recycling.

"I’ve seen people go to Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s and those places. One of the manufacturers that makes such a bin would be Rubbermaid, and they have lids on them as well," he said.

Lowell and Linda Dietz use bins that they purchased at Home Depot. But in their household, the recycling and green thinking doesn’t stop with the bins in the garage.

The couple chop leaves and branches for the garden, compost, use reusable bags at the grocery store and even donate old plant containers to nurseries and junior Master Gardeners.

"When I’m setting up a new flower bed I’ll set about six to eight levels of newspaper down and then put the compost on top of that," Linda Dietz said. "That keeps the moisture in the ground better and it breaks down over a very, very long time and I don’t have a lot of weed problems either."

Added Lowell, "We recycle everything unless it is extremely inconvenient. Nothing takes too much time if you put it high enough on your priority list."