In the spirit of my previous entry on coming clean with you – the sweet, clean reader – I offer up my latest confession:
I don’t recycle.
Let me expand on that statement slightly: I don’t recycle anything. Newspapers? No. Glass? No. Cans? Nope. Phone books? I’m gonna go with no. Plastics? Surely you recycle plastics? That would be no. I don’t recycle. Never have. I’ve got plenty that I think is recyclable (glass, cans, newspapers, you name it!), but I don’t recycle any of it. It all just goes in the trash.
I can just see the dazed, manic expression of the “save the (insert_cause_here)” folks heads: What? He doesn’t recycle? This does not compute. This does not compute. What do we do?
I could give you some cutesy reason as to why I don’t recycle, like, I’m afraid my wife would run over the recycle bin in her fossil-fuel belching SUV (which…now that I think of it is kind of another half-valid reason), but the truth of the matter is I just don’t want to recycle and there’s no incentive for me to do so at all.
Does my garbage bill go down because I put a Diet Coke can in a plastic bin instead of the trash can? Nope. The city actually makes money selling my trash and (hypothetical) recyclables to companies. Do I see any of that money? Are my taxes going to go down if I recycle? Nope.
Will I sleep easier at night knowing that I saved x amount of space in a landfill because I recycle? Nope. We all help pay the salaries of hard working men/women who are paid to inspect the garbage at the landfill and remove recyclables. I don’t want them to lose their jobs. And even if your area doesn’t pay someone to do it, there are definitely some people who go to the landfill and remove recyclables to go to the recycling center because they can use the extra $2-3 for doing it. Do I want to be the one that says, “Gee, sorry Mr. Homeless Guy, you and your dog are just shit outta luck because I’ve decided to start throwing my own cans into this little plastic box?” No, I don’t want to be that guy.
I don’t pretend that I’m some kind of hero (for this reason, anyway), but the possibility exists that people who don’t recycle are actually doing more to advance the effort to “save the _____” by not recycling. Somewhere right this very minute, genius scientists and inventors are coming up with new ways to use my trash for all kinds of greater needs: electricity, paving roads, creating shipping commerce (garbage barge joke! j/k). Who knows what they’ll think of next? If we all recycled, this research might still go on, but not with same sense of urgency because the land fills wouldn’t be growing at the same rate (hypothetically).
But, in complete honesty, the latter reasons above are just secondary and tertiary reasons. The real reason I don’t recycle is that I don’t see a reason to do it. I wouldn’t save any money. I wouldn’t realize some sort of practical benefit.
My garage has two bins: a big ol’ trash can and a bright, clean, shiny recycle box. My name is Kevin and I don’t recycle. I use the trash can for everything. (Otherwise the recycle box might get dirty!)
eviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil, you are eviiiiiiiiiiil i tell you! hahaha
Ha… I remember those days…
then my church put in these huge green and yellow dumpsters for us to put all our paper products in them… the church gets $ to pay off the building fund, but wait the collective we have to have over a gazillion tons to make the big $$$$ on the tonage….
then the evil girl scout leader decided that the girls should save all the aluminum cans at home and sell them and give that money to this fund thing…. I carry bags full in the back of my truck…
and to make it worse “someone” said to take the little pop ring thingy off the top of the cans and put them in a gallon milk jug… one full jug would equal $25
that was 2 years or maybe 3 and we have yet to fill up a milk jug… and we empty about 24 cans a week…
I miss the old days…. good for you Kevin !!!
I mean, I’m all for causes. I totally donate. But doesn’t it make more sense for everyone to donate an extra quarter a week than to lug all those newspapers around? Wouldn’t the girl scouts be better off if everyone put a quarter in a piggy bank every day?
Recycling is the answer for some people. Just not me. Just doesn’t seem to be accomplishing to much.
My take on recycling: Trash it. 😉
My SUV runs cleaner than your car.
I know, sweetheart. We live in a state & county that makes inspections much more stringent than most in the country.
I just like to use the term “SUV” in my non-recycling post to further poke the “save the ____” whackos!
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