It’s been too painful to write this post. It’s been stewing away in my brain for weeks. But I can’t keep it in any more. I’ve been …
My recycling, that is. My curbside recycling has been rejected. Because recycling here is
So I’ve made a couple trips to the ginourmous local Hardcore Recycling and Landfill Center. (That’s not the name? It is now.) I’ve never been so glad to have my minivan as when I fill it full of moving boxes, newspaper, and rejected plastics, and pull on up to the bins to start sorting and chucking. But it doesn’t matter if your cute little yogurt pots are clean and stacked and sorted — they don’t want ’em. According to the friendly recycling staffer at the Hardcore (and if you can’t trust a total stranger in a head-to-toe glow-in-the-dark orange jumpsuit who randomly starts talking to you next to the scrap metal bin, who can you trust?) — it is cheaper for the county to dump some plastics in to the landfill and send them off to China to be sorted than for those plastics to be recycled domestically. “Can’t be bothered with yogurt pots,” he cheerfully admitted.
Hot damn. I have a lot of yogurt pots. Also ice cream tubs
But here’s the thing: I managed to keep our amount of rubbish to a fairly low-impact level and in two weeks had just exactly the right amount of rubbish to fit in to the relatively miniscule green bin which we put out for pickup. AND THEY DIDN’T COME. The dustmen participated in a national strike which happened to fall on our rubbish pick up day. Pensions, equity in pay, whatever. Do you know what this means? With the fortnightly-only pickup scheme, it means no rubbish pick up FOR A MONTH. I know I am reducing a complex issue to a very small, a very selfish, a very specific complaint, but honestly. Solidarity has an uphill climb when you’re talking piles of trash stacked up around the neighborhood.
Oh, the rejection.
Crumpets in Camelot 
I would be sorry for your troubles except that they’re such entertaining blog fodder. “Who can you trust?” Aha ha ha!
Yes, what good is life experience if not for a laugh? 😉
I feel your pain. We used to live in a township that had very struck rules about what could be recycled and what couldn’t be. The garbagemen would glance at your tub and if they saw even one thing that wasn’t on the approved list, they’d dump the whole tub onto your lawn.
That way all the neighbors saw your shame. And, of course, you had to pick up the mess after you got home from work– which was another reminder to FOLLOW THE RULES.
It sucked living there.
What the whuck? Wow, I was feeling rejected to find plastics left forlorn in the curbside recycling bin — rubbish dumped on the lawn would be so much worse. Isn’t that, I don’t know, littering? I find it incredible that the recycling guys have time to sit there — at every house — and sort through the bins looking for rejects.