I am always waiting for the big recycling scandal to break, when concerned citizens will be shocked to learn their municipalities don't actually salvage paper and glass but merely dump it in the same landfills as the regular waste.The sinister Department of Public Work's time, money, and labor saving equivalent of sweeping inconvenient refuse under the couch instead of disposing of it properly.
My local recycling center certainly seems more like a distracting pantomime of green-fingered effort rather than the serious environmental operation it claims to be. Hence my suspicions that it's all an elaborate ruse by City Hall to keep the ecofriendly voters happy. The employees even dress in a uniform of brightly colored overalls and jaunty baseball caps, as if they were cartoon characters in a child's storybook about sharing the world responsibly with tree spirits and talking squirrels. I just want to drop off my empty bottles and cardboard boxes, not take a tour of a rainforest theme park.
But I suppose it's a dirty job and somebody's got to do it. At least, it would be a dirty job if I didn't have to rinse out those empty bottles before handing them over, and crush the voluminous square cardboard boxes into flat brown oblongs that can be sandwiched together. So I'll be thrice annoyed if it's discovered they surreptitiously bury this stuff when my back is turned: once for poor old planet Earth, once for my property taxes, and once for my aching bones.
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