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.