The Recycling Rant

We are avid recyclers in this house.  We have the list of can do and can't do posted on our bulletin and we follow it.  I have a box upstairs and a bin downstairs, both dedicated to collecting the things we throw away that our city has deemed "recyclable."  I guess in this thing, you can say we're being sheep, because I'm really not sure why we go to all the trouble. 

I remember the day I first seriously questioned the value of recycling.  I was standing at the kitchen sink, water running as I rinsed my trash off in the sink.  I live in Arizona, a dry, arid desert, with lots of land and very little water.  Then I realized... here I am, spending my time and the scarce resource of our community, water, to protect the plentiful resource, land?!?!?  At that point, I kind of started resenting the time and effort it took to recycle.  For a while, my city made it up to me, they implemented a program called Recyclebank.  It would weigh your recycling when it was picked up and then apply points toward rewards based on the amount of recycling you did.  I cashed in on a few free museum passes.  It didn't alter my doubts that it was possible I was participating in a cultural ritual that had little beneficial impact on society, but at least the efforts resulted in something positive for my family.  I think their free trial period expired though, because they quit participating in the program. 

Well, that's about all there is to the story.  Sadly, I'd like to say that I've rebelliously quit recycling and I now put everything in the trash, but I haven't.  I still rinse my trash, put it in a container a little too small to hold all the big plastic jugs and hope that my community is able to resell it to somebody for a high enough premium to make up for costs it generates to pick up.   But something tells me the $300 I pay each year for trash pick up is what pays for that service... and if the community makes anything from the reselling, its nickels... but perhaps there are some enterprising businesses out there who have figured out how to create new products from this renewed raw material.  To this business, I reluctantly, but cheaply, dedicate my time.  To my children, I can naively claim to be doing what I could to improve their future. 

As I think about it, my attitude might move from resentful compliance to apathetic compliance if they just didn't ask me to rinse my trash.  I'm pretty sure they rinse it again after they get it anyway.  And, doing the dishes that I'll reuse is an ongoing task of its own, but doing the dishes for somebody else to reuse, is down right annoying!