Portland is a proudly “green” city. We have a national reputation as being one of the most livable metropolitan regions in the nation – due, among other things, to (comparatively) progressive zoning regulations, a (comparatively) impressive array of green office buildings and alternative fuel use (in April, Oregon was chosen as an electric car test site, so charging stations will be installed across the city and up and down Interstate 5), and a (comparatively) high rate of recycling.
I inserted “(comparatively)” because, being an on-site observer, I’m less impressed -- more aware of how far we fall short than of how far beyond the rest of the country we may be. Familiarity breeds content, as a blogger would say.
First stop is the recycling and trash room down the hall from my apartment. It contains two upright blue plastic recycling bins, and a trash chute that feeds to giant dumpsters on the ground-floor loading dock.
There are signs on the door and on the wall above the bins that explain what should go in each bin and what should not. The rules are pretty simple: one receives glass only; the other takes paper, plastic, tin, and aluminum. Cardboard should not go into either bin but should be broken down, folded, and carried to a huge cage-dumpster on the ground floor loading dock. Food is also prohibited; bottles and cans should be rinsed out.
Some of my neighbors apparently can’t follow these simple instructions. I have run across:
· Glass bottles in the paper recycling
· Plastic and aluminum in the glass recycling
· Cardboard in both (including full-size boxes not even broken down and therefore taking up far too much space)
· Foodstuffs in the paper recycling, from residue inside tin cans to half-eaten slices of pizza
It looks like most of my neighbors never rinse bottles and cans after drinking the contents. Many of the “empties” I have retrieved still carry soda or beer. Often, my fingers grow sticky with sugar and alcohol.
Collecting the containers is a matter of taking the elevator to each of six floors, going to the recycling room, and rummaging in the blue bins. Sometimes the paper/tin/aluminum/plastic bin is so stuffed that I can only dig partway down to some of the loot and leave the rest. Sometimes the glass bins have busted bottles in them (slammed into the bin, or broken back in the apartment? hmmm . . . ) so I have to pick out the recyclables with care. Once, I cut the side of my hand and drew blood.
There are occasional windfalls that add joy on the hunt: plastic bottles or aluminum cans already sorted into a bag or box so I don’t have to pick them out one by one, for example; or empty beer bottles tucked back into the six-pack carrier in which they were purchased.
Less pleasing are plastic bottles and aluminum cans that have been crushed -- inadvertently by other trash, or purposely and carelessly by their consumers -- so that I have to pull, squeeze, or blow them back open in an attempt to make them presentable so the recycling machines can read the bar code on them. Worst of all are glass and plastic containers on which the code has been defaced, or the label completely torn off, which makes them a dead loss (for me, anyway).
Over the course of several weeks, I learned to take along a small metal shopping cart to organize and carry the weight of 30-40 glass beer bottles. A few relatively clean paper and plastic shopping bags -- especially the big boutique-style ones with handles from Nordstrom’s or Storables -- make the plastics and aluminums easier to carry, as do collapsible cardboard six-pack containers for the glass bottles. Except for the cart, I have scrounged all these carrying tools from the recycling barrels as well.
Repeated visits to the bins on the various floors of my building told me a little about my neighbors, as the study of any waste will do. Somebody loves those 24-ounce Beck’s “Super Size” beer bottles. I pick roughly a dozen of those out of the third-floor bin every week, and I have to think it’s just one person who drinks them, because I never run into any of those size and brand on the other floors. Somebody else on the third floor drinks a lot of bottled water.
And is it my imagination, or do the folks on the top two floors consume more wine and hard liquor as opposed to beer?
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