Being green, seeing red
One of the benefits I get from my enormous city tax bill is garbage removal and recycling. My city provides recycling bins and rolling plastic trash cans, which we green citizens dutifully place on the curb once per week.
One of my recycling bins is smashed and cracked to the point of uselessness. For the past several weeks, I’ve been putting it out on the curb, empty and upside down, in the hopes of indicating to the Guy Who Drives The Big Noisy Neon Green Truck Down My Street At 6:00am that I’d like them to recycle that bin. And each time, it just gets left there with the other bins.
Last week I tried throwing it into the trash can. The Guy Who Drives The Other Big Noisy Neon Green Truck Down My Street At 7:00am took it out of the trash can and left it on the curb with my other recycling bins.
Thwarted again.
So this week, I put a paper sign on the broken bin, saying “BROKEN – PLEASE REPLACE” in large, friendly letters. Again, the bin was left on the curb. But at least they took off the paper sign and recycled that.
Luckily my city has a dedicated phone line for Trash Issues, staffed by helpful and knowledgeable civil servants who are trained to answer all your disposal-related questions, such as “are pizza boxes recyclable?”, "do I have to remove the labels from plastic bottles?", and “if I chop up the body, do I still need to put it in a plastic bag before it can go in the can?”.
I called the number, and explained my bizarre situation. The nice lady on the other end put me on hold for a few moments, and then returned with her answer. “You have to put the broken bin inside of one of the other recycling bins if you want it recycled.”
On reflection, I guess that makes perfect sense.
