Be Clean With Your Garbage

Do us all a little favor and help the environment.  Please be clean with your garbage.  It's more than picking up your own trash like a responsible human being does, it's sorting trash from what can be recycled. 

No, your used kleenex does NOT go in the recycle bin and neither does your oily pizza box. 

Years ago back in 1989 I lived in an apartment complex in Petaluma.  Earth Day was just becoming a thing and nobody recycled.  I remember approaching the manager of the complex and offering to set up a recycling program.  I'll never forget the look she had on her face when she told me point blank, "You think people are going to actually sort their trash responsibly?  People are sloppy PIGS and they don't care about ANYTHING that does not directly impact their immediate self-gratification, let alone sorting trash they are throwing out either one way or another."

Wow.  I just remember being stunned at her reaction to my wanting to voluntarily set up the program. Now, many years later, I understand why she said what she said.

It's true.  People ARE pigs.

We all want to feel good about recycling.  The truth of the matter is that so many people are not properly sorting trash from recyclables that recycling is now a joke -- it takes more energy and resources (which we are trying to conserve) to clean up the recyclables before they can be recycled than if we just put it all in the trash.   If news of the ineffectiveness of recycling broke out, every Prius driving tree-hugger and Hairy Arm Pit Club member would be up in arms. 

I suppose I'm asking a bit much from humans to keep their own pen clean.  At least pigs do that.  Pigs are actually neat animals.  They don't intentionally destroy their living quarters.  I'm re-affirmed of that each time I drive out the back roads and see mattresses, refrigerators, couches, broken glass, beer cans, tires, burger wrappers, cigarette butts, etc., on the side of the road.  Many times I see it in the middle of the road.