Recycling Rubish

Are you into recycling? I imagine that most of us (UMs being Socially Conscious in the Wesley Tradition)do our share. We fill our recycle bins with the right types of plastic, cans and paper. (KC does not take glass.) We make sure our bins are at the curb on the right day.
It seems that more and more people are shunning plastic shopping bags and are carrying reususable ones to do their toting. The women of the MO Conference UMW Mission Team all have hand crafted, one of a kind, recycled tote bags. I hope that they are using them.
But, somebody tell me, where is the corporate world on this recycling thing? Explain this to me. Why are there so many empty shopping malls and empty strip mall buildings? Yet, there are more shopping centers and strip malls being built every day. In my community alone there are 2 huge malls standing empty. And, in the same community there have been built three completely new shopping areas. Just last Spring, a new Lowe's and an Office Depot popped up (like overnight) on a beautiful patch of virgin pasture land.
Is it okay to recycle paper and plastic and not entire buildings? WHAT KIND OF FOOTPRINT IS THAT LEAVING FOR OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN? I cannot see how what we are doing makes sense financially. What makes a 5 year old building unusable? My house is 50 years old, for Pete's sake! And, trust me, it's quite liveable. Cluttered, but liveable. And, speaking of Pete, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is centuries old. Nobody is talking about replacing that one.
So, what's a gal to do? The recycling that I faithfully do doesn't amount to a hill of beans, when compared to the hundreds of unused, unrecycled buildings in this country. We can reuse notebook covers and cut down on paper copies till we are blue in the face and we'll never be able overcome the useless waste of an 40 store, 3 story mall!
Let's stop the madness.