Greener Patures

The next big thing. The biggest bandwagon to come around in decades. Why? Because it’s a cause, as well as an issue. But I’ve got news for you. You’re a day late and a dollar short. More than a day late and a few dollars short of millions if your goal is to make a difference. Because today, the only difference being made is your well-being. Makes you feel good to recycle that bottle or can, doesn’t it? “Well, geez, LaFeve, better late than never!” Uh, right.

You know ‘green’ has gone mainstream when companies get tax breaks for recycling efforts, not to mention the amount of contributions to environmental charities that are written off as tax-deductible, making it a for-profit move, since that really isn’t charity in the end, is it now? You know ‘green’ has gone mainstream when recycling becomes required, on a governmental and/or corporate level. San Francisco is leading the charge into the future. Why? Because San Francisco is passing laws to make sure you recycle. Recently, it was passed that if any of the recycling bins (blue, green & black) were visible from the street, meaning out on the sidewalk in front of homes and apartment buildings, owners will be fined $100. Make the effort to recycle, and get fined for leaving your bin at the curb. If that isn’t a hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.

Furthermore, there are now trash inspectors looking into people’s trash to see if there are efforts being made to recycle. If not, a notice is issued. No fines or citations. But you know that’s the next step. And all this time I thought it was a matter of conscience, and voluntary by nature. Now, it’s the law. And that’s just the ‘greening’ of the political landscape. Let’s take a look at what else is going on.

For the most part, I agree with the efforts, on an overall scale, as evident in smaller locations. That is how it works. But in a major metropolitan areas, I don’t think so. And SF is a perfect example to represent this environment in all major metropolitan areas, for one reason, and one reason only: entrepreneurs. I refer to them as entrepreneurs because, although many of them are of the homeless variety, many are simply doing it for the money. They serve a purpose, since the items are being recycled, but there’s money to made here. I live and work here in SF, and I see it everyday, in more ways than one.


Let’s start at home. I live in an apartment building. One black garbage bin for garbage. Remember: the blue one is for bottles, cans and paper, and the green is for compost, meaning food items. The black one is for non-recyclables. You know – plastic, and anything that isn’t glass, can, paper, or food. Which covers a lot of ground. The black one is at the bottom of a chute that runs from the top of the back stairwell to the ground floor. The blue one is out in the alley. And there is no green one. Some take there bottles down and set them next to the black bin, while others leave them near the chute on their floor. Does any of the glass end up being collected by the recycling truck on their pickup day? No. There’s nothing in the bin. There’s an old lady with a laundry basket who comes by on the one day the building janitor does his cleaning and mopping. He brings down all the glass left by the chute and she loads up her cart. Yes, it gets recycled, but not by the city. This same woman, and many others I see throughout the day, make it a part of their daily routine to go through neighborhood blue bins for glass and cans. Paper and cardboard recyclers have been doing it for years, going from supermarket to supermarket, corner store to corner store, picking up all the boxes emptied by the store, to be recycled for money.

Now, I don’t have a problem with this. It is being recycled, and someone is making money off it. Cool. That’s ‘capitalism’, and what America is based on. The problem with this scenario is, city government is requiring it, but they’re not making anything off of it. They’re exacerbating the problem, not helping it. If you’re homeless, you can eat from the green bin, recycle stuff for money from the blue bin, and use stuff to live on from the black bin. By having these bins available on the sidewalk, while some of it gets recycled, the majority of it is collected for profit. I am at a loss as to how the recycling division of the sanitary company supports its payroll if the majority of what is supposed to be recycled, is taken before they even get to it.


Here’s another scam that survives simply because the service they provide is legal. Copier and laser toner cartridges. Here is a market that thrives on the unsuspecting buyers/customers. I know. Purchasing has been one of my responsibilities in corporate America for 25 years. Not a week goes by I don’t receive a call from some fly-by-night, boiler room company trying to sell me remanufactured toner cartridges. Oh, they always say ‘not only are theirs better than the OEM’s (original from the manufacturer), but they hold more toner. Fine. But the fact remains, these remans, as they are affectionately referred to, as well as remaxes, they have been used and refilled. Plain and simple. It’s one of my favorite game to play with these scam artists when they say theirs holds more toner, yielding more output than the original, I tell them, “sure, but the cartridge you’re selling, has already run 5000 copies. You’ve refilled it with toner, but did you replace all the moving parts?” The silence is always deafening. I hang up immediately.

But there’s insult added to this injury. If you save the various cartridges used in your office, and try to cash in on the recycling factor, you only get pennies on the dollar. I have 8 different cartridges for 8 different laser printers in my office. The smallest costs me $60. And that’s an OEM (original from HP). The larger ones for the larger machines, I purchase a remanufactured version at a discount from my corporate supplier, and enjoy a slight discount, being a corporate account.

For awhile, I was stock-piling used, empty cartridges, utilizing the services of one of my vendor delivery persons carting all of them to the local recycling plant, to be reimbursed for the used cartridges. The smallest one ($60) yielded .50c. Half a buck. I kid you not. When I challenged the return, I was given the chart highlighting the breakdown for all of the cartridges I was attempting to recycle for money. So, you start with a brand new, HP laser printer cartridge for $60, that lists for $75/$80 dollars at a local retail store, and you get .50c back on the used, empty cartridge, and this same cartridge is cleaned and refilled and resold for $40, and you expect me to recycle for the good of the environment, when the environment is nowhere in the equation, and other people are making money on your good faith for recycling? Makes me want to puke. Even worse, you can’t recycle a ‘reman’ cartridge. Why? It can only be used twice. Recyclers only accept ‘OEM’s. No ‘remans’. “SOL”, as they say.

Plastic. The worse culprit of the world. Easiest and least expensive to produce, with a shelf life somewhere around a century, but no recycling aspect whatsoever. It’s why I don’t cut the six-pack rings when I’m done stocking the fridge. At one employer, an environmentally-conscious associate told me I was required to cut them, I said, “I’m required to stock. Cutting rings is an environmental issue that I was not informed of at the time of hire. If you want to cut them, be my guest”. It was an obvious power play, but I wasn’t going to get sucked in. I eventually left due to the amount of hassle with this person. I do the same thing now at my current location. After previous experience, I realized certain things and developed a theory, and a subsequent response, should another challenge involving the same issue arise. As usual, it did.

After the usual question of why the rings weren’t being cut, I gave the same reason that my responsibility was to stock, not to cut, rings, ‘for the environment’. The obvious response, of which I was prepared for, was that they end up in the ocean, trapping sea life in the process. Uh, yeah. “This stuff ends up more in landfill than it does in the sea.” The latest report shows the majority of the stuff that ends up in the sea, for the most part, ends up in the Pacific. And for some odd ecological, environmental reason, all of it is pulled, obviously due to natural forces at work, to a central location somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Somewhere between California and Hawaii, and due west from there. Dubbed the “garbage patch”, it is three times the size of Texas. It has been documented that over 75% of it is derived from land sources, through dumping, with the remaining 25% coming from air and seas sources.

Plastic. It can’t be recycled, so what better place than landfill, to fulfill a solid requirement to build on. Besides, what creature, or creatures, from the animal kingdom, thrive and survive in that environment? Rats and seagulls. I don’t know about you, but I think if there was one less rat or seagull in the world today due to being entangled in a plastic ring, we’d be better off.

I realize that sounds insensitive, but you have to remember this: I love the environment, and animals even more. If these creatures choose to spend their time in this environment, they’re just asking for trouble. People call pigeons flying rats. I disagree. They simply feed off what humans drop. It’s the seagulls that are the flying rats. They fight each other food, and are the true bottom-feeders. Seagulls are not predatory by nature, but will grab a pigeon if it’s hungry enough. Witnessed it first hand. I was fortunate enough one time, to come across a seagull who had a pigeon by the tail. I though the pigeon was already history, until he started flapping his wings. I moved in and the seagull moved away. The pigeon was too heavy for him to lift off, so I darted towards him, and he let go. The pigeon flew off. A saved life.

Seagulls nest on the roof of the building I work in. When the building engineers go up weekly to clear the nests, as they tend to block air conditioning and heating ducts, the gulls actually attack them. I have no respect for seagulls. So if we lose one or two, or fifty, from six-pack-ring strangulation, so be it. (For the record, I work with animal and environmental non-profits, so save your chastising for someone who deserves it. You’re preaching to the choir.)

As far as I’m concerned, I find it hard to believe we haven’t started dumping on the moon. Think about it. No oxygen, rendering it uninhabitable. The moon is useless. Makes you wonder why we really had to go there in the first place. Especially for what it costs to do so. It also explains why conspiracy theorists say we never went there at all. A hoax created in the desert. (Can you say Area 51?) Nonetheless, technology is more advance now. So why haven’t we made more trips to the moon, or even Mars?

All it would take is one global company to secure agreements from, basically, the majority of the free world, and then some, to transport all the world’s unrecyclables to the moon. Of course, the first assumption is that there is no gravity to keep it there. Uh, we wore gravity boots when there, meaning there is a small amount of gravity, otherwise, all the loose materials (moon dirt) would float away. Small price to pay. I see the pics everyday, submitted from around the world. You think the US has a trash problem? Check out the Far East. China, Philippines, and India. The rivers and lakes are piled high with refuse that children wade through for items that could be sold on the black market.

‘Green’ is big business. And Government and the corporate sector have begun requiring us to adhere to mandated programs, only to serve for political and monetary gain, overshadowing the benefits of the very reason it serves. It’s required today simply because of the abuse that permeated our society for decades, making it obligatory appears to be the only way to reverse the effects. Which defeats the whole purpose. Laws are passed on an issue that was originally voluntary, but because of the damage done for the past decades, it appears by making it obligatory, it will speed up the reverse effect. All I want to know is, how will it be enforced?

Who knows. Laws will be passed, policy will be established, notices/warnings will be issued, but basically, it comes down to you and me. We are the ones that have to make the effort. I say, “To the moon”. If that’s too close to home, put the shit on the shuttle that seems to orbit this planet for no real purpose, and shoot it out into space. No gravitational or centrifugal forces at work here. It ain’t coming back. And what better way to initiate contact with extra-terrestrial beings than to send our garbage out and have them come tell us to dump our shit on our own moon, not the rest of space. Either that, or they end life on Earth as we know it. Maybe we’d be better off starting over anyway. It’s been done before.