I finally broke down and packed all our recyclables and drove to BARC.  It's a 16-mile roundtrip trek from our house, but I'm willing to make the drive because of my past relationship with ARC organizations.

My college fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, has a strong relationship with organizations such as ARC. We worked with PARC (Peoria, Ill.) when I was in the fraternity, so I feel while I’m getting paid to recycle, I’m also helping out a great program, rather than a guy off the street trying to make a few bucks. Nothing wrong with that, just have more of a relationship with non-profit groups.

Anyway, I raked in a whopping $22 dollars and some odd cents for the six months of recycling – plastics, cans, milk jugs, newspaper. Is it worth it? I don't know monetarily. But I feel good about it, and I think that's what makes it worthwhile.