it isn't easy being green

 photo by will sherman

i am a recycling fiend. i can’t even put the junk mail into the normal trash bin without feeling like i’ve betrayed some deep commitment, so we often end up with more recycling than trash. i’ve taken food scraps to the compost pile of a local farm rather than throw them in the trash bin. i pick up other people’s trash when we go for walks. i even once made todd drive around a not-so-great chicago neighborhood for 30 minutes looking for a recycling facility.

so you can imagine that i have used the recycling bins at work and at our apartment complex for the past year a lot. like daily.

last week, i had a few loads of recycling to take out at home. i took the first, which was in a large,  blue gap bag. a few hours later, i took the second along with a bag of regular trash. i noticed a large, blue gap bag full of my recycling in the regular trash bin. i thought this might be a one-off occurrence, but the same thing has happened with every subsequent bag of recycling.

at work, the trash collector lady usually came around after i left for the day. but she now comes around earlier… and i noticed last week that she dumps the recycling and the trash in the same bin. this is also not a one-off occurrence, as i have observed her do the same thing every day since (shudder).

these companies put out the bright blue bins in an attempt to appear green, but are either too cheap or too lazy (or both) to actually act on it. i’m really irritated at the charade. i try hard to do everything within my reasonable ability to live green, even if it comes at a personal inconvenience. i place my recyclables in the blue bins, with the expectation that the bins are labeled “recycling” because their contents will eventually be recycled.

i’m trying to figure out who to complain to about this (ideas?). if you’re not going to offer recycling, fine. just don’t lie about it! i could have taken my year’s worth of recycling somewhere that would actually recycle it.

i will personally deliver our recyclables to the actual recycling facility in virginia. i’ve already located it and have a list of approved materials (which is very extensive, score! todd is thrilled). call me a hippie or a tree hugger or what have you, i don’t care. i just want to recycle my stuff.