Since the eco-scientists of the
world found their voices the thoughts spilling out of their heads got stupider.
In case you lost track of the
long list of brilliant ideas, I’m here to help you out. You’re welcome.
Some years ago, elementary school
kids were prompted to shame their parents into something called “recycling.”
Recycling is an exercise for you to
pre-sort your garbage.
Before that magical time, you
would place your garbage in a garbage can.
To get technical, you could also put it into plastic bags. But I digress.
Dirty paper towels, plastic water
bottles, empty tuna cans, jars, bottles, broken toys, Styrofoam, and clumped
kitty litter would find their way into trash receptacles for their trip to the
dump.
Garbage men would ride up and
down the streets emptying the cans into the rear of the truck. I am speaking with authority inasmuch as I
worked as a garbage man to subsidize my college education.
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| Garbage truck and garbage men |
But those elementary school kids
became easy targets to invent new ways of approaching life. In other words, they were looking for a
problem to their solution.
It didn’t take long for the city
municipalities to embrace the concept of recycling. It’s one of those special times when they
felt they needed to “do something.” And do
they did.
Those cities, whose politicians
needed a platform for re-election, latched on to the idea of a special pickup
for recycled garbage. A lame way of
“doing something.”
Of course there was no money in
the coffers for repaving streets or hiring more employees at the Department of
Motor Vehicles; but they found some stashed cash for buying and distributing
dedicated recycling garbage cans.
If that weren’t enough, they also
conjured up – through tax hikes – more money for recycling garbage trucks and
recycling garbage men.
Week after week after week the
people of our town dutifully separated cans, plastics, and bottles, from the
soiled paper plates, blue bread, and leftover spaghetti.
Television newscasts applauded
the public for this “first step” toward a cleaner environment, keeping true
garbage where it belonged – in the dumps – from adulterating reusables such as
the bottles and cans and newspapers. And
we were led to believe that the recycling of goods would be a money maker.
The plastics would be made into
carpets and clothing, cans would be fashioned into rain gutters, and newspapers
would be re-mulched into more newspapers.
And although this effort was
minor in nature, we all felt good about helping Mother Earth maintain a level
of livability for its inhabitants. It’s
a win-win.
Suddenly, the county decided
recycling of bottles needed to cease. Evidently the glass recyclers were
inundated with glass for which they had no more room, and the cost of recycling
glass had become prohibitive as recycling fees dropped to near zero.
What is our society to do?
While you’re pondering that deep
question, I’ll interject something even more disconcerting.
Amy Freeman, a writer for the
Washington Post, issued a story concerning saving landfill space. Her article addressed “skyrocketing”
municipal landfill waste – “11.15 million tons in 2017.”
Freeman added that “unwanted
textiles, however could be reused, upcycled or recycled.”
What a terrific idea, much like
the glass bottle crusade that wound up as a buffoonish tax dollar and precious
water waste exercise, a new campaign could make the populace feel stupid by
forcing them to recycle clothing and other textiles.
It’s about time for the great
environmental thinkers to stop with their knee-jerk reactions and concentrate
on genuine matters that affect society, such as politicians conning
constituents out of their hard-earned money to pander for votes.
Clearly we’re just not
overwhelmed enough.
