Obsessive Recycling

By admin

At what point does recycling go beyond being a good eco-friendly habit and become a bad all-consuming obsession? We all know how important it is in this age of dwindling natural resources and problematic landfill engineering. But can you take it too far? Is there such a thing as too much recycling? I say yes. If you live in an area where recycling is really easy, yet you go to lengths that inconvenience yourself in order to do it well, I think you have gone too far. Not to mention the fact that you are probably some kind of crazy, tree-hugging, save-the-world, bleeding-heart kook if you do that.

Have you ever seen that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa likes some environmentalist nut boy? She tries to impress him by mentioning how she mulches at home and he responds, Just at home? You mean you don’t pocket mulch? …and pulls a stinking mulch pile out of his pocket to show her.

Mama Riah goes a little overboard herself. We have city-issued trash cans where we live and the blue one is for recycling. When the city first went to this system earlier this year they sent helpful flyers out telling you what to put in the recycling bins. One of the helpful hints was that they didn’t want food-contaminated containers, whatever that means. So my wife dutifully rinses out the cat food cans before tossing them in there. I mean these things are sparkling clean before we let them go.

Me? I just tossed an empty tomato-juice jug in there. The clear plastic was still as red as a tropical sunset from the inside. I suppose I could have spent ten minutes scrubbing it out first, perhaps soaking it in some eco-friendly cleaning chemicals first. Yeah right. Like all my neighbors (and all the other city residents) are doing that.

I kind of miss the good old days. The refuse company used to sort the trash out themselves and separate anything recyclable. Now what was wrong with that program? I can’t help but wonder if they still do that with the regular trash now, or how many people lost their jobs with the new system. One thing is for sure, the city sure was proud to roll out the new trash cans. They occupied a prominent place in our annual 4^th of July parade.

So now we have to separate the trash ourselves. Which means you need like two little trash cans in all the rooms of your house if you want to do it right. Somehow I don’t think all my neighbors are carefully sorting every item they throw away. I must admit however that there is something inside me which makes me feel just a bit satisfied for doing a good job at it. That’s probably a delusion.

Papa Riah

Technorati Tags: Recycling, Environment