Let them eat cake

Last week I promised I would share the following with you.

Dear Engineering dweebs Recycling Gods

It was recently announced that you intend to break out the tough love on recycling vagrants. Now, you know me. I loooove the environment. I love you guys but, really, are you really going to bust me for every scrap of recycling I misfile? I am a librarian. I take my filing pretty seriously but even I have my limits.

Regardless of all that I must register a complaint. Hear me, right here and right now. If you plan on busting the fair citizens of Gotham err Vancouver you better do us one favor first. I am begging you here. Please for the love of god either start accepting those commercial garbage bag sized blue bags or else triple the size of the "paper products" receptacles.

WTF?!


You pretty much make me throw away paper by making it far too hard to fit all the waste paper I have into those stupid little yellow bags you have especially designed for what?? the equivalent of 23 undergraduate essays stacked neatly back into a ream?? I have 3 -- they are not enough. During the summer garbage strike I discovered that we have quite a lot of what I call dry garbage. Not garbage with a wry sense of humor or aplomb for a limerick but rather garbage that is actually recycling in disguise. Stuff like business cards, old to do lists, book dustjackets, junk mail literally ad naseum, the over in all the over-packaging involved in everything from toy trains to condoms to fish flavoured spelt crackers. We have lots of this stuff and you know I don't didn't recycle it, then as soon as I gave up your curbside service... As soon as I could cram it into a garbage bag sized collection unit what happened? Well let me tell you ... our personal garbage stores fell by 60-70%! Am I alone in this?

Now, don't let me get sidetracked on buying everything in bulk and otherwise just skipping the packaging I know, I know. But buddy, that just ain't gonna happen. I like eating my ice cream of the Ben and Jerry's variety. Ever since the big lye accident my husband prefers it when I wash the clothes with detergent from the store. My kids, when they eat, like to eat goldfish salt chunks of the vacu-seal variety. Hey, I yam what I yam. We will look at our problem but what about you? Don't you think you could lighten up on us a bit and simply let us recycle what we have? Isn't that the plan??

You know just because I am a nutritionally-challenged, couch potatoing, enviro-lightweight doesn't mean I don't want to recycle... right?

Sincerly
Citizen Mo