Recycling=Rocket Science???

When I was a child, we didn't have trash service out on the ranch (we still don't.) We burned our trash in a trash pit, in which we had to light the trash then get away fairly quickly. We kind of tried not to throw away pressurized aerosol containers, but it happened. You could hear a high-pitched whistling noise before the container exploded.

Back then, just about everything got thrown in the trash---cans, bottles, newpapers, you name it.When the pit got full, we shoveled the debris---charred glass bottles, soot-covered cans--out and took it and dumped it on the creek. When we got rid of big stuff, that too was taken down and dumped. The place where we dumped stuff was a veritable gold mine of Rusty Old Stuff---a hopping singles bar for tetanus, where tetanus bacteria came to party like it was 1973, get drunk, and randomly procreate with other tetanus bacteria, leaving lots of homeless baby tetanus bacteria in their wake, tetanus bacteria which lurked around on old rusty metal, just waiting for the day a mammal scratched up against it.......

For really big stuff, there was the City Dump. Now, technically, we probably weren't supposed to use the City Dump, because we lived outside the city limits so we didn't pay city taxes. The City Dump was what the city used before they had trash pickup. People dumped their garbage in the dump, which was a U shaped large pit in the ground, where people backed their pickups up to the hole and threw in their garbage---which sometimes included the pickup, if it was in such bad shape that even baling wire and duct tape couldn't keep it held together. (Lots of vehicles were held together with baling wire.) There was a fire going in the pit at the City Dump, constantly. The fire was always burning.

I guess they filled in the Dump around 1975 or 76, 'long about the time they got people to come to people's houses, pick up the trash, and cart it off to be dumped somewhere else, presumably somewhere where small children couldn't escape their parents' notice for long enough to wander off and fall into the Pit with the Eternal Fire.

Anyway, in case y'all haven't noticed, I said nothing about recycling. That's because, at least in this part of Texas, there warn't no recycling back then, 'cept maybe automotive recycling. That's where you took the door off the 20 year old car and put it on the 18 year old car that had gotten a dent, or when you took the truck bed off the pickup with the blown engine, and cut it to make a trailer out of it.

We weren't opposed to recycling, it's just that there was no place to take it to and nothing for them to do with it if there was.

Somewhere around 1976 or '77, aluminum recyclers came on the scene. You could pick up beer cans and take a bunch and sell them and get enough gas money to get to the recycling center. Boy howdy!

So whatever recycling I did was pretty well limited to aluminum recycling until about 1985. However, there are 3 parts to the reduce-reuse-recycle equation. When you don't have a lot of money, you don't have a lot to spend on stuff you don't need (though, actually, we did okay in that category). When your dad grew up during the Great Depression, and for 7 school years, you live with your grandmother who got married in 1929 and raised her family during the Great Depression, AND you live on a ranch, you learn not to throw stuff away. Ever. As those who lived through or grew up during the Great Depression die, their loved ones are left with houses chock full to the gills with......stuff. You know, stuff like string, rubber bands that long ago lost their elasticity and will break if stretched, rags from clothes that haven't been work since 1962, paper bags, old newspapers, loose screws, you name it. People who were forced to live on nothing, don't generally buy and throw away a lot of stuff. My grandmother never used a trash can larger than a small pail.

So, I started recycling in earnest only as an adult. For the past 15+ years, I have had a household that is committed to reduce-reuse-recycle. Before curbside recycling, or when I lived in places that didn't have it, I hauled things to Ecology Action (9th St. and I-35, Austin.) I've brought recycling up from the ranch, brought it home from places like offices and friend's apartments that didn't recycle, carried empty soda cans to my car instead of throwing them away like everyone else at whatever gathering I was at.

I make it clear to all my housemates that we recycle. I have one trash can in the kitchen for trash, and another can for recycling. In addition, I have a container for paper recycling.

So why do I find recycling in the trash, and trash in the recycling?

Really, now. I'm pretty sure that 5 year olds can distinguish between plastic wrap and plastic milk bottle, between cat turds and tin cans, between.... (trying to think of what I actually throw away, as opposed to recycle....some things, but not much.) I'm pretty sure that a 5 year old can grasp that you can recycle paper like letters and junk mail and newspapers and stuff like that, but you can't recycle wet, dirty paper towels. (they may not understand why you can recycle one and not the other, but I'm pretty sure they can grasp the difference and, once taught, reliably say which bin item should go in.)

So if a 5 year old can do it, what's with men in their 30's? What the hell?

Not only are the 2 guys who live under my roof unable to grasp the concept of the difference between what is "recycling" and what is "trash", but they also seem to forget which bin is which. I don't get it. I really don't think this is rocket science. Furthermore, they aren't the only clueless morons that have lived under my roof. With Mark (age 36), Pete (in his 50's), Craig (late 20's), and others...... the distinction seems to be lost.

Do men just have a fundamental inability to function on their own? I mean, I'm sure there are capable, competent men out there, but....where are you, and what's with all these clueless dumbfucks? Are they educable?

I sometimes say that Great Danes get their brain implants at 18 months. Despite the rule of thumb that dogs mature at 1 year of age, that's really more of a teenage animal, like 13 or 15 in human years. A lot of dogs don't really get their brains until they're about a year and a half (some don't really mature until 3 years), when they start to calm down, remember rules like Thou Shalt Not Chew Shoes or Barbies (Just Say No To Crippled Barbies), they start to remember the meaning of that 3 letter word (the one that starts with s and ends with t) or that 2 letter word (the one that starts with n and ends with o) that they've heard about 1500 times. But, you know, even 1 year old dogs can do well in agility and obedience. Just not consistently---after all, dogs have a kind of ADD. If something else seems more appealing than doing a sit-stay, well........

I used to think that human males got their brain implants around age 25. Let's face it, the mission and goal in life of human males aged 13 to 25 is to see JUUUUUUSSSSSTTTTT how close they can get to killing themselves, without QUIIIIIITTTTTEEEE doing it. (And when they do manage to achieve that end, people go, "Wow, I never thought that would happen!!!) The Darwin Awards are good evidence of this.

But now I'm wondering when, or if, human males ever get their brain implants. In fact, I think I'm going to try to get into some kind of talk on neuroscience, raise my hand, and ask just that question.