Okay. One more time. NO WIRE HANGERS!

The small apartment building I call home recently had its recycling privileges reinstated, after a three-year hiatus. I’m not familiar with specific criteria governing this disciplinary exclusion; but if there were rules to be broken, we broke them. And by “we,” I mean the occupants of the apartments surrounding mine.

I’m sure they all have names.

Back in the days of the old blue receptacles, my neighbors exhibited an astonishing lack of recycling acumen. It was breathtaking. I’m no zealous eco-warrior, but I do know that pizza boxes are not recyclable in the City of Austin. Neither are extension cords, paint cans, shards of mirror, milk cartons, light bulbs, packing peanuts, or dead animals. And, except for that last one, every one of these items appeared in the small, recycling bin that lived near our dumpster, just off the alley that links 45th to 44th.  Cans, bottles and appropriate plastic food containers were also in there, but they were almost always filthy. An empty tin can encrusted with rotting food is not a recyclable item. It’s trash. Just put it in the trash.

I once saw a clear, plastic cake box in there ... the sort of box in which one might find a birthday cake. Or, in this case, half a birthday cake.

The stupefying ignorance implicit in these actions became a regular source of personal frustration and, in spite of my efforts to avoid it, anger. I would walk to the bin with my acceptable, rinsed recyclables only to be rewarded with the sight of someone’s broken dishes or someone’s dead batteries, or someone’s old telephone. This happened with disturbing frequency. And, with the bin full of trash, I was forced to put my recyclables in the dumpster … while imagining the idiot who just tried to recycle cake judging me from behind his mini-blinds.

These transgressions drove me to do things I ordinarily would not do.  I downloaded and printed the DO NOT RECYCLE list from the City of Austin recycling webpage, and taped it near the mailboxes. When this failed to reduce the flow of garden hose, frying pans and wire hangers, I actually taped the list to one of the ubiquitous pizza boxes in the bin. This didn’t work either. I stopped short of going door-to-door to distribute the list. This would have been easy -- there are only twelve units -- but I didn’t want to be that guy. I’m not that guy. I HATE THAT GUY.

FLASHBACK: Austin in the Nineties. I was living in a house on a street in a neighborhood that required the recycling bin to be schlepped to the curb one day a week. One week, on the morning of that day, I awoke to the sound of the recycling truck ingesting glass bottles somewhere down the block. In a flurry of bleary action, I managed to deposit our meticulously organized bin curbside just as the truck was pulling up. I quickly walked away, barely looking back. Hours later I discovered an angry yellow sticker affixed to the bin. This sticker was primarily comprised of a list of possible recycling transgressions, with LATE TO CURB checked purposefully, with a well-blunted Sharpie. 

Staring at this sticker, I savored the dizzying Orwellian irony of chopping down a tree to print a sticker to scold someone for being LATE TO CURB with a recycling bin. Then, I recalled a fleeting glance at the scornful, judgmental frown of the recyclable materials collector who was walking up to the curb as I was walking away. Yeah. That guy. Sticker guy. I HATE THAT GUY.

So, what really bugged me about the recycling failures of my fellow apartment dwellers (apparently now beyond the jurisdiction of angry yellow stickers) was not the real or perceived harm to the planet, or even what might have been a stubborn refusal to go along with the program. (Don’t want to recycle? Fine. Don’t. I’ve got my own problems.) What I objected to was the repetitive demonstration of arrogant, blissful stupidity. I mean, really? I can’t imagine needing to be told not to recycle empty motor oil cans. I’m pretty sure I can rely on logic and common sense and everything I’ve learned up to this point as a functioning, sentient being on this particular planet. But for someone requiring more, there’s a website for that.

This bad recycling behavior continued up to the announcement of the new Single Stream System. The old bins were to be replaced with large, lidded cans, and all recyclables could be tossed in impunity. Willy-nilly. Indiscriminately. Chaotically. Surely this system would fit right in with our questionable practices, and the sheer size of the can would accommodate any number of sins. I was downright ecstatic. If we couldn’t fix the problem, we could at least camouflage it.

But, we did not get our new can. Everyone else on the block did, but we didn’t. One by one, the old receptacles were collected, and the new cans distributed. But not at my house. We were ignored. I never asked, but I always assumed this was punishment for past indiscretions. For abusing the privilege. For failing to grasp the most rudimentary tenets of the most rudimentary of programs. In fact, the city didn’t even pick up the old bin. It stayed right where it had always been …  they just stopped collecting from it. Now it was just an old blue box …  dead to them. Like Fredo.

Undeterred, my fellow residents continued depositing recyclable and non-recyclable items in it and on it and finally around it – week after week. Zombie-like. Eventually, the pile of refuse obscured the bin.

I could have cleaned it up, but I’m not that guy, either.

I went to Vegas for a week and when I returned, the mountain of misdirected rubbish was gone. I don’t know if the city cleaned it up, or the apartment manager or one of my neighbors. But it was gone, and we still had no single stream can. We were apparently off the recycling grid. For at least three years we were not required to save the planet.

And then, a few months ago we got our can … or someone else’s can was commandeered. Either way, the building is recycling again. And since there’s plenty of room for my stuff, I refuse to even ponder the unholy detritus my neighbors may be tossing in there with my bottles, cans and assorted paper products.

Okay. We can just assume the pizza boxes.