It’d been a month since I’d been to DCA Reagan National Airport, the most centrally located airport in Washington, DC. In this last month they’ve gotten rid of my favorite gourmet snack shop with healthy fruit, nuts, organic chocolate, and Honest Tea. Now my eating options are much slimmer - greasy pizza and greasier hamburgers. But that’s another rant.

In the past few weeks, the airport has also installed recycling bins near many (though not all) of the trash cans. They offer both newspaper and plastics recycling bins, which is great considering how many newspapers and soda bottles I see lying abandoned near the gates.

It’s a bit tragic that recycling bins are newsworthy in the capital of the U.S. in 2008, and at first glance I wasn’t totally sure these were new since they blended into to the airport scenery. Maybe I’d just missed them before? But I’m sure I didn’t because the new Recyclingbin.com tags were still on them.

The good news about these bins is that travelers now have the option of reducing some of the waste they produce while confined in airport terminals. Unfortunately, not everyone makes that choice. In the 10 minutes I was sitting and waiting for boarding I saw one middle-aged business woman casually throw her newspaper in the trash– and she had to walk by the recycling bin to get to it! Luckily, a worker was emptying the trash at that same moment and looked at her, picked up the newspaper and walked it over to the recycling bin.

I hope she was embarrassed.