Garbage In, Garbage Out

Weather delays and labor disputes meant we went four weeks without recycle and yard waste collection, starting December 23rd. Garbage was picked up once and my wife dropped off some of the other overflow at the waste management site. Most neighbors let the excess accumulate and optimists left the bins and extra bags and boxes out round the clock, even though the company website and television news reported that nothing would be picked up. Managing three bins has been a constant frustration. Years ago, I converted the kitchen into a mini garbage dump by lining up three containers with the labels: Garbage, Recycle, Food Scraps/Compost. I hoped to eliminate confusion, laziness, and mis-filing of waste which I thought might be caused by a garbage can under the sink, a recycle bin in the garage, and the yard waste bin outside. We no longer have seven full-time family residents, probably because a Waste Management Enforcer (me) runs a kitchen dump. Yet any sorting continues to be random. My 18 year old grandson is a special needs student who is so smart he operates the television remote control for clueless me. Still he does not grasp that a plastic container cannot be recycled with food caked all over it. My youngest son visits often but cannot recognize that a big bag of McDonalds waste contains three separate types of disposables. So I resort to a re-sort when dumping the kitchen containers into the bigger bins. This allows me to recover perfectly good food. If the family wants me to stop eating out of the garbage, they need to start sorting properly. This type of threat used to work but apparently everyone has made peace with my descent into inappropriate eccentricity.

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