I just got some great news.
Starting in March, residents of my town will no longer have to separate our recycling. We will simply dump all our recyclables in blue boxes, unseparated, and set them at the curb. The guys who pick them up will just toss the items in the truck and take them to the recycling centre where they will all be sorted.
An announcement that I won a huge lottery would make me happier, but just a bit. I have been sorting all this crap for the past 25 years and this practice has been the source of many a tantrum accompanied by language that would make a pirate say, “My, my!” Because it is a loathsome task, I normally save it till late Monday nights and while others are sleeping, I am filtering through cans, bottles and papers. It will be so nice not to have to worry about whether this piece of paper belongs in the fine paper box or the newsprint box and a dozen other silly decisions.
I have been doubly afflicted because I am a perfectionist and therefore agonize over getting it exactly right. And then there are the days I go to the curb to bring the boxes back to the shed only to find that a lot of what I have carefully sorted and included has been rejected, not because it is not acceptable, but because a new driver has taken over the route and he has different rules than the one who picked it up before. It’s embarrassing running down the street after the recycling truck waving a plastic pop bottle at it because it was obviously mistakenly missed.
Oh man this is going to be great.
Actually I feel a bit sheepish at this news too because at a relative’s place in another municipality one day, I saw the recycling guy dump all their carefully sorted recyclables in the same bin and my paranoid mind instantly assumed that all this was going to the dump instead of to a place to be recycled. Now I know better.
It pains me to use a current expression, but “My Bad.”
©2011 Jim Hagarty
