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Recycle
THIS
Earlier
today I received a notice advising me that the
recycling program in my neighborhood has been
"rebooted" and that I will henceforth
risk "serious fines" if I fail to sort
and, in the case of jars and bottles, RINSE my
garbage before leaving it out.
I hate to come off as a bad sport, but I've got
to tell you: In all these years I've never once
sorted or rinsed my garbage and I'm not about to
start now. I mean, what exactly IS this shit? I
don't even sort and rinse the stuff I keep!
Let me try to explain something here. I would
never have had a problem with the chore we've
been assigned if a vital need to conserve
essential natural resources was the given it's
assumed to be and if the claim that recycling
saves significant quantities of natural
resources was true.
But the importance and value of recycling is
dubious at best. Summarily ignored, a number of
reports (including one in The New York Times)
revealed early on that, in fact, we're not
running out of the substances recycling is
intended to save. What's more--and this applies
to nonbiodegradeable materials that end up as
landfill as well as to organic elements--even
the industry's own published (and doubtless
exaggerated) figures make it clear that what the
recycling process manages to salvage is of no
real consequence.
So while I'll allow that self-immolation would
constitute a disproportionate form of protest, I
have to say that reacting with less than
indignation to so gratuitous an imposition would
also be inappropriate. (Particularly when you
consider that nowhere in the notice was there
mention of a tax rebate for performing what, if
it's to be performed at all, should properly
have been a function of the Department of
Sanitation from the beginning.)
It's obviously not as dramatic, but this
recycling business has always reminded me of the
so-called "oil crisis" of the late
seventies. Remember that? Remember how we were
told flat out that after decades of witless
gorging on a finite resource we'd all but
depleted the world of fossil fuels? Remember
how, to be sure that we got the message, we were
made to endure frantic weeks of gasoline
rationing and reduced thermostat levels?
(I know that my senator then, Senator D'Amato,
will want to cut in here to tell me this was
before "Jurassic Park" came out and
that at the time we didn't realize we could make
more.
Yessir. That's an...interesting...point. But,
and with all due respect, sit the fuck down!--
it's beside the point I was making. Okay?
The point I was making is that the whole thing
was a setup to get us to accept inflated
petroleum prices. There was, it turned out,
enough oil left under just the backyards of
Kuwait's Emir and Mobil's CEO to run our
quadrant of the galaxy AND keep Pat Riley
splendidly coifed for another century or two.
Now I'm aware that it's not that easy to resist
scams like this, even when they've been run on
us before and there is good evidence to belie
the premise on which they're based. Being
mortal, knowing that--at any time and in any
number of ways--the most terrible thing that can
happen is definitely going to happen, we are
obliged to grant at least the possibility of
substance to all but the most patently
ridiculous warnings of an impending catastrophe.
(And, having been handed at birth a sentence
reserved for the worst of crimes, we're not only
primed to accept the blame for catastrophes, but
more than ready to suffer a little redemptive
inconvenience as well.)
Still--Jesus!--as difficult as it may be to
defend against our innate susceptibility to
manipulation, we could make a better effort. At
the very minimum we could reduce the frequency
with which we're victimized by keeping the
batteries fresh in our bullshit detectors and
never forgetting that, more often than not, the
"emergencies" we're presented with
have an agenda behind them.
Recycling, for example, isn't about saving the
planet. (And no, it's not even about making
money for somebody--not really.) It's about
winning the personal salvation of the limited
and earnest types who proposed and continue to
insist on it. These people are coming from the
secret hope that if they suck up to nature by
not wasting any of it, nature will return the
favor and arrange to perpetuate their existence
in some other package once their current status
expires.
Well, I for one, don't appreciate it when people
conscript me into the service of their personal
immortality projects, especially when they
masquerade as humanitarians.
It's not that I would, for a minute, begrudge
them such a reward. But given its size I think
they should be forced to earn it on their own,
with no assistance from the rest of us. I can't
speak for nature, of course, but if they stopped
by my place a couple of times a week to do their
sorting/rinsing thing that would certainly
impress me.
I didn't say anything about them coming into the
house. Along with the trash, I'll leave my
garden hose unraveled behind the shed. They're
more than welcome to go back there and rinse
anything it pleases them to rinse.
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