5018 Recycling Anger

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

I am very angry at (with?) the township.

Several weeks ago we got notice that all recyclables, collected twice a month, were to be put out in either closed lidded containers or in clear plastic bags.  I had been using an open container -- a hip-high kitchen trash can.  It was light enough for me to easily carry out, and big enough to hold everything.

Well, there's nothing with a good lid that would be convenient for me.  I'd almost need something I could wheel out, and all the wheeled thingies are too big, so I decided to go the clear plastic bag route.

I visited several stores before I concluded that there's no such thing (not in stores around here, anyway) as a clear kitchen-sized trash bag.  Not to mention that even if there had been a space on the shelves labelled for clear bags, everyone in the township was looking for them.  I finally bought some clear bags in a hardware store, but they're sized for yard waste, and are ridiculously huge.  Also ridiculously expensive.  But it was the last box, so I bought them and used them for one collection, realized they were ridiculous, and then went looking online.  Found the right stuff on Amazon.  Used the Amazon ones for the second collection.

The third collection since being told to use clear plastic bags is tomorrow.

Today, late this afternoon, we all got phone calls and alert emails from the township.  Recycle materials must be put in closed containers only.  "Plastic bags will not be picked up." 

Changing horses with less than one day's notice.

You could hear the swearing all up and down the street.

The phone call was a recording, but I swore at it anyway.  Loudly.

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I thought hard about what I could use and finally remembered that I had two of those old green Rubbermaid stackable recycle bins in the garage, the kind with the sloping flaps on the top front.  I don't remember why I'd kept them all these years, haven't seen them actually used since recycling started three or four decades ago. But, they DO have lids....

So I put my stuff in them and put them out (paper in one, glass, plastic, and cans in the other).  I hope the guys recognize them for what they are, and don't toss the entire recycle bins themselves into the truck, too.  I also have corrugated cardboard (cut, flattened, bundled and tied, as ordered!) sitting next to them, and six huge kitty litter jugs all tied together by their handles (which they may or may not take, although they are #2, but they're not in a "closed container", sigh), so it would be easy for the guys to just throw everything in without thinking.

I'm going to have to watch for them to make sure the right things go and the wrong things don't.  They come anywhere between 7:30 am and 3:00 pm.

Sigh.
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