By Jim Hagarty
1993
A small town in my area, in an effort to make sure people don’t send recyclable bottles and cans to the landfill site by stuffing them out of sight in green garbage bags, has found a way around the problem.
As of Oct. 1, town residents will be required to set out their refuse in clear, plastic garbage bags so that the workers who pick them up can see whether or not any recyclable material is contained within. If it is, the bags will be left on the curb.
The other way clear bags will encourage recycling is the shame factor. When your neighbours can see exactly what you’re throwing away, the theory goes, you’ll make sure not to trash something you’re not supposed to. Like the homeowner with the perfectly lush, green lawn during a drought and watering ban who can hardly claim he isn’t using the sprinkler, the sins of those who break the recycling rules will be pretty “clear” to everyone.
However, like many good ideas that come soaring off the drawing board like a space shuttle off a launch pad, this one may crash upon the rocks of reality when it gets going. First of all, it discounts the fact that many people don’t give a hoot what their neighbours think. And secondly, the determined non-recycler will probably take the few extra seconds to stuff his bottles and cans down into the middle of the bag where they can’t be seen.
Still, if it’s only partly effective, the environment will be the winner.
The loser, in my view, will be the personal privacy of modern-day citizens whose right to some secrets has been taking a heavy beating in the past quarter century in any case. When your garbage is put out in clear bags, more than just your recyclables will be on display for your neighbours to see. So will your worn-out, holey “unmentionables” which have been retired after many long years of faithful service. So will those old love letters which promise your undying devotion to your sweetheart along with, in the fashion of Prince Charles, details of what sorts of things you might like to do with your friend in a darkened room on a Friday night. So will cancelled cheques and credit-card statements, showing vital numbers you might not like to have everyone know. And so will magazines and books you always took great pains to make sure nobody knew you looked at.
In short, putting out the garbage in this town come October (and in other communities, eventually) could become, for some people, a frantic exercise in public-relations damage control as vital items will have to be shredded and wrapped and stuffed out of sight of the neighbours’ prying eyes.
But even more troubling in this trend to “clear” solutions to modern problems is how the same use of public embarrassment to encourage right behaviour may be applied to other facets of our lives. Clear shopping bags, for example, might deter shoplifting but would make it even harder to sneak those Christmas presents, X-rated videotapes and bottles of whiskey into the house. Clear “kitchen catcher” bags would indicate to the Composter Cops who’s sending their banana peels and apple cores to the dump and who’s doing the “proper” thing by letting them rot in the backyard.
And glass houses would surely make a dint in extramarital affairs, family violence, problem drinking and illict drug taking not to mention sleeping in on Sunday mornings. Wouldn’t want those neighbours thinking we are lazy, now would we? Of course, if we hadn’t been so lazy in the first place, we wouldn’t have simply thrown our recyclables in the garbage and brought about this clear bag rule.
A more sensible solution, in my view, is to charge us all significant deposits on all recyclables, from cans to bottles and jars and even plastics, and then return the money when we bring the materials to recycling depots such as are already in operation in Alberta. Deposits work because even if some people are too lazy to claim the money, others who find their throwaways will be glad to.
Of course, the town in question can’t implement something like this on its own and to its credit, is ahead of other municipalities in its environmental initiatives. But environmentalism, like other movements, could do with a little less religious fervour and a little more common sense.
Let’s be clear about that.
