based on a true story

When I first moved to Brookline, I spent the first week or so unpacking a set of boxes of hand-me down glassware and kitchenware that my parents sent to me in a fit of housewarming magnanimousness. With the boxes unpacked and their contents promptly tucked away, I started looking into how the boxes were supposed to be recycled. I called up the local town hall and was then promptly told, "Oh, I'm sorry, we won't recycle your garbage."

"Excuse me?"
"We don't do recycling in your area. You're too close to a commercial district, and aren't covered by the neighborhood recycling program. Call your condo management company."

Ok ... dialing condo managers.

"Oh, the disposal firm that we contract with doesn't do recycling. They'll still take the boxes though."
"They'll just throw them in a landfill somewhere, right?"
"Yeah, just be sure to cut the boxes apart before you do so."

Ok ... pull out yellow pages.

"Hello, "
"Hi, I've got a few cardboard boxes that I'd like to recycle, will you take them?"
"Sure! We charge $ for every sq. ft. of cardboard"
"Wait. You're going to charge me to recycle my garbage? Shouldn't you be glad that I'm just not throwing this away? After all, hucking it into a dumpster would be free."
"Well ..." (click)

I grew up in Vancouver, which holds the world championship title belt for hippy capital of the world. All the West Coast draft dodgers from Vietnam settled in Vancouver. Greenpeace was founded there. As was Adbusters. And when it comes to cardboard, you either recycle it or you refashion it into the caricature of an Evil Corporate Entity just so you can burn it in effigy. To do otherwise makes you A Bad Person.

Eventually, I found a recycling depot in Newton that would take all of my cardboard and paper. The only problem with it is that it's in Newton, which is a good 15 minute drive away, and isn't quite as convenient as leaving a green box outside your stairwell, but one learns to live with these things.

Fast forward to last Sunday. I was in Cambridge, dropping off ~b after an early afternoon shopping expedition, driving south towards Central Square, and trying to make sense of the weather. It was warm. Disturbingly warm. I-can-imagine-icebergs-in-Antartica-melting-and-turning-Iowa-into-coastal-real-estate-thank-you-very-much-global-warming-warm. Though, I suppose, there are benefits to being able to spend more than ten minutes out in the elements. It encourages one to carry through with certain errands and obligations, like cleaning the car.

I've been meaning to clean out my car for a while, as it's starting to go from being pretty messy to being a homeless shelter on wheels. The back seat is filled empty coffee cups, paper bags, discarded Marlboro boxes (not mine, my passenger's), magazines, old junk mail, and about two months worth of my subscription to the Boston Globe. I signed up for the Globe in a fit of whimsy, gripped by a sincere desire to stay more in touch with local politics. Besides, it was being sold to me by a 70 year old man who sounded like he needed the commission to pad out his meager pension, and I was for a brief, yet crucial, moment being weak.

And I do read it. Sometimes. However, my problem is, of course, I don't throw it away. Two months of newspapers have been sitting in my trunk, waiting for an eventual trip to the Newton depot for recycling. Surely, I thought, I'd be able to find a public recycling spot in The People's Republic of Cambridge and avoid having to drive out that far. Hell, I could probably go to the local crunchy organic food co-op and find out where to take my trash.

So it was, with that in mind, I entered Harvest to ask a labret-pierced punk cashier if they can take my newspapers and he said, "Oh, sorry, we don't take newspapers. Cans and cardboard boxes only. You should talk to Town Hall about getting a recycling bin."
"Actually, I don't live in Cambridge. Know a place where I can take this stuff, then?"
"uhh ... no. sorry. Try the library."

The library was closed, as was Town Hall. The Bread and Circus didn't do newspaper recycling, and so I walked back to my car, the latest issue of the Sunday Globe in my hand, thinking that it shouldn't be this hard to do the right thing. I got in anyway, drove to Newton, and felt slightly troubled that in all the times that I've been here, I've never seen another soul use the depot.