I’m scurrying around the house tidying up, which gives me away.

Spread out along a hillside near the Beverly Hills Hotel, Susan Gottlieb's baseball-field-size home garden — dubbed the Gottlieb Native Garden — boasts more than 100 species of native plants and brims with wildlife activity.

Recycling has become the norm in many communities. The detritus of our daily lives — plastic, glass, metal and paper — makes its weekly trek to processing plants across the country.