Another Jig Jog

One morning last year one of my neighbors came to me, visibly upset. She’d seen our city garbage collector come by. She’d watched as his truck’s mechanical arm picked up BOTH her trash bin and her recycling bin and dumped their contents into the truck. “Why separate recycling from the trash,” she exclaimed, “If it all goes to the dump anyway?” It’s actually worse than she thought. Much worse. If your house is like ours, most your recycling is plastic. If your community is like ours, most of your plastic recyclables used to get shipped to China, until January 2018, when China stopped accepting it. Now it all goes to the landfill, where it will take FOREVER to break down. Suddenly it’s not enough that I diligently separate recyclables from the rubbish. It’s not enough that I refuse plastic straws and ask for paper shopping bags. I’ve got to rethink EVERYTHING I buy in single-use plastic. We all do.