Before it became the ‘thing to do’ my father taught me the importance of recycling. See, he’s a biologist by training though by practice aslo an astronomist,
botanist,
entomologist, oceanographer, ecologist and student and teacher of the planet earth. I don’t remember how old I was when we began recycling but it was just something that we
did. Newspapers and cans and tin foil and whatnot. The zoo where I grew up was in an unincorporated part of town and our trash was not picked up. It was the impetus of
Operation: Recycling where I fell in love with the dumps.
I know a lot of kids are fascinated with the dumps so I am not going to try and act like I was some Healthcliff the Cat, living at the dumps or something. But something about the enormity of it all … the loud noices, the scales, the backhoes and the nasty putrid smell that I found totally fascinating. In the beginning, I remember making special trips to the dumps to get rid of big things like refrigerators and whatnot (surplus from the zoo). Then at some point in my father’s evolution to sustainable living we began Operation: Recycling and we got to be those people pulling into the truck bays with crap that would be turned into new crap. Que fun!
I am not trying to tell you that my dad was pulling used cans out of garbage bins on the street and picking up shit at the beach with a metal detector (those people are sooo weird), I’m merely saying that my father knew that the end of the world would be upon us if we didn’t act fast and start processing shit that could be re-used. Early on in Operation: Recycling, I remember my mom haphazardly putting used saran wrap into the trash, causing my dad to jump across the kitchen counter and reminding us all to, “REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE!”
Recycling has been such a way of life in California
(where I am from, not where I live now) for so long, that it’s not something we
do, it’s what we
are.
I know that sounds insane, but living sustainably really does define a huge part of our lives. (And yes, I can say ‘our’ because I will always be a Californian, regardless of my postal address!) I cannot tell you the number of times I have been walking with a friend in San Francisco and either of us has carried a can for blocks until we found a proper recycling receptacle. I mean, for Pete’s Sake, the drains on the street say, “DRAINS TO BAY” so as to remind you, “Don’t put motor oil, mattresses or your estranged wife down the drain. It WILL float to the surface and we WILL pin it on you
(Scott Peterson)!” And then they banned plastic shopping bags cause they lead to 4 gajillion tons of trash in landfills every year.
Yeah I know. And then we told the gays they could marry.
Flash forward to my move to DC. I have heard spotty sordid tales of the recycling here and I can’t seem to get a real clear answer about whether or not they do. But I’ll tell you this much, most public places do not have recycling bins for paper (offices, libraries, etc.) and there most certainly are not bins for cans and paper products on the streets. You simply have to put a can in and hope they separate the trash at the processing plant. It’s unclear whether this is actually happening but I can’t bear to pray on it folks. I have to do my part!
Most recently, I have become hyper-aware of all the crap my household produces and it appears I have become crazy about REDUCING REUSING AND RECYCLING a la my father. I think a part of it happened when I moved and saw all the needless isht I own. I am a minimalist, we know this (Exhibit A: the SFAH). But as I was putting away all the needless bathroom products I own, I thought to myself, “Seriously! How much gawd damn lotion does one 5′1″ body really need?” So I did some researching about how best to dispose of that crap (down the drain) and went ahead, washed and rinsed out the containers and kindly put them in the recycling bin behind the SFAH.
What further pushed me down the rabbit hole of OCD recycling was a recent trip to Best Buy. It seemed half of everything I purchased came in a plastic, heat-sealed pouch thingy 400 times the size of the product. “Here’s a 1gb photo card and 500 CARBON UNITS OF ENERGY & USELESS PLASTIC!” Here we’re spending all this time and energy worrying about the demise of our planet and freaking out about oil prices and wanting to build biodeisel go carts for our kids and construct solar panels on movie theaters and whatnot and, how about we cut back on the god damn plastic production in this country? Don’t you think that 1gb photo card could have been produced, shipped and sold to the all mighty capitalist in a tiny plastic container? Like the one it’s already in? The one that is the SAME EXACT size as the card itself? I mean, we’re working on an AIDS vaccine, can’t we make less plastic products? Can’t a small Thai child shackeled to a machine make a little bitty bar code to put on that little bitty item so we aren’t making a case simply to hold the price and hang it from the rod in Target? Can’t we? Isn’t there a way? Someeonedeargodstoptheplastic!!!
If you take one second to think about all the trash you personally contribute on a daily basis, you might be astonished. In fact, just yesterday at the grocery I said to my friend, “Man, those 100 calorie snack packs are really the best invention for people with portion control.” He quickly replied, “That shit is lazy. If you can’t count out 12 crackers because that’s what the box says is a serving, then you shouldn’t be eating them. Not to mention, look at all the extra waste that’s produced with each bag inside that box.”
The further we’ve come in America. The smarter we are. The more efficient. And fresher. And quicker. And cheaper. And smarter.
The fatter we have become. The dumber we have become. The lazier we have become. The total and completely self-indulgent and unsustainable we have become.
have never experienced such sex in the mouth as Juevos Rancheros, I promise.
