By Catherine Getches
Sunday, April 21, 2002
[NOT FULL ARTICLE...]For two weeks I drove, my trunk full of everything from crumpled Coke cans and empty Heineken bottles to torn-up Raisin Bran boxes and toilet paper rolls. I was in hot pursuit of a place where I could rid myself of my recyclables. But the rental community where I'm living doesn't separate its paper and plastic from its flotsam and jetsam, so I had no choice: I became a dumpster stalker.
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What began as a mission grew into an obsession. I stopped at a bar and asked where they discarded their beer bottles. I inquired at bagel shops and pizzerias about the final resting places for their Pepsis and Mountain Dews. I visited alleys behind restaurants, snooped around office buildings and, aside from a few receptacles on a college campus, I found that it all went to the same place: the trash.
For a late-twentysomething who grew up in suburban America, this is equivalent to a Puritan being told that there is no God. Ten years ago, recycling was easy, ubiquitous and usually color-coded. Blue bins were part of the landscape, flanking trash cans at home, office, grocery store and college campus.
But these days it's not so easy to be green. Plastic soda bottle waste doubled between 1994 and 1998. Last year, according to the Container Recycling Institute, the aluminum can recycling rate dropped to 55 percent, its lowest point in 12 years.
I see evidence of trouble everywhere. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, facing a $4 billion deficit in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, proposed recently that the city suspend its money-losing metal, plastic and glass recycling service. He predicts citywide savings of $57 million. (Paper recycling will continue.) Once such a suggestion might have been politically risky, but the bring-your-own-coffee-mug crowd has become the buy-your-own-bottled-water bunch: They'll just drop their empty Aquafinas (bottled by Pepsi) and Dasanis (bottled by Coke) in their trash compactors and go about their business. U.S. sales of bottled water grew 30 percent last year; it's now a $3.5 billion market.
If you doubt this shift in perspective, go to any Starbucks. Ask for a mocha and you'll often get a cup inside a cup (a single layer being too hot to hold) protected by a corrugated paper "java jacket" and, for those on the move, a cardboard carrying case. It's enough packaging to mail the darn mocha across the country.
I saw the first hints of recycling apathy when I was living in New York City a few years ago. I'd lug bags of recyclables down six flights of stairs and place them where the superintendent instructed: right next to the heaps of garbage bags at the curb. Then I'd watch as a single dump truck whisked away all the bags simultaneously. At work -- a midtown Manhattan publishing house with more than 10 magazines to its name -- I was told the company recycled "downstairs," where "maintenance takes care of it." I had a hard time picturing the already overworked maintenance staff picking through each employee's trash bag, separating stacks of magazines from newsprint and colored paper, not to mention apple cores, excess cream cheese and chewing gum.
When I moved to Phoenix, I was glad to see the city-run recycling service for many residences but couldn't believe the number of stores, eateries and apartment buildings where management didn't offer recycling. After consulting the Internet, I found four drop-off locations (two of which turned out to be defunct) for aluminum, plastics, glass and paper. Newspaper is the easiest to recycle, thanks to the Boy Scouts' bins scattered about. But I don't know anyone else in my apartment complex who goes beyond the dumpsters, and all of my friends unflinchingly cast their refuse into one container. Don't they remember what we learned in kindergarten?
Of course, most city governments have learned that recycling doesn't pay for itself. When New York City passed its 1989 recycling law, members of the City Council and environmental advocates predicted it would save money. That hasn't been the case, although on what side of the balance sheet do you account for all those reprocessed plastic bottles? The American Plastics Council reports that the industry recycled 1.5 billion pounds of "post-consumer" plastic containers in 2000. That's a 368 percent increase since the beginning of the decade, but essentially the same as the amount in 1999.
The best evidence of a waning interest in recycling may be the change in marketing tactics. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that companies have concluded "green" sales pitches don't sell: In 1994 Philips Electronics named an energy-saving fluorescent bulb "EarthLight." In 2000, it was repackaged as the seven-year "Marathon" bulb; sales grew 12 percent.
To recycle now feels like a quirky hobby. While others accumulate automobiles or art, I hoard trash.
On Sundays, my boyfriend and I pack the car, drive to the depository and then celebrate our good deed with the Sunday paper, bagels and mochas. And I've gotten over the strange looks from the counter guy when I hand him the extra cup I saved from the previous Sunday's outing and ask him to fill it up.
Catherine Getches is a free-lance writer who wouldn't mind if you recycled this column.
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