In late 2008 Shreveport joined many other communities in a recycling program.  It couldn't be easier.  We have a blue bin.  We dump paper, magazines, catalogs, plastic, aluminum, and glass in there.  All in the same bin.  A big truck comes by on Monday, dumps the bin, and drives away.  No sorting, no fooling with different bins and boxes and tubs, nothing.  Simple.

Not so in parts of the UK.  In Newcastle, this is what they have to deal with:

The containers include a silver slopbucket for food waste, which is then tipped in to a larger, green outdoor food bin, a pink bag for plastic bottles, a green bag for cardboard, and a white bag for clothing and textiles.

Paper and magazines go in blue bags, garden waste in a wheelie bin with a brown lid, while glass, foil, tins and empty aerosols should go in a blue box, with a grey wheelie bin for non-recyclable waste.

I hope they provide a chart so you can remember not to put your plastic bottles in your blue bag instead of the pink one.

Not only that, but then one must worry about the Bin Police who can fine you for overfilled bins, bins incorrectly filled, or bins put out at the wrong time.  There are also instructions on how to fold a cardboard box so that it fits into the green bag, and on how to insert a plastic liner in your silver slop bucket.

I wonder if they see the irony in this.  All these bins and bags can't be good for the environment, not to mention the extra trucks and crews (and fuel) to pick them all up, and now it seems people are burning their trash in order to avoid recycling which is releasing toxins into the environment.

Isn't there a point where we micro-manage people's lives so much in the name of doing good that we do more harm?  All these global warming and green people seem to be exacerbating the problem by trying to tell everyone how to fix it.  It's like those horrendous curly light bulbs that don't work as well as incandescent bulbs, and don't light a room as well.  They contain mercury and should not just be chunked into your garbage can or it could release mercury into your landfill.  Crikey!

Tomorrow when I pull my one blue bin to the street, I'm going to thank Mayor Cedric Glover for adopting a simple system.

Curbside recycling begins in Shreveport tomorrow! We've all received our blue toters and I've had mine filled for weeks. So the big day is tomorrow - the first pickup. Ours is a pretty simple recycling program -- just dump your recyclables into the blue cart; you don't have to sort anything. But when the carts came, they also came with a flyer of simple instructions as to what you can and cannot put in there. Obviously no garbage, no yard waste, no rocks, bricks, dirt, that sort of thing.

I thought I was all ready to go with my little cart pulled to the curb and then I read Kathryn Usher's blog which reminded me that the toter handle must face the house! I'm all, "Oh crap I did it wrong!" I felt like a dork running outside to turn around my cart. But sure enough, I checked my flyer, and I watched the little video (Recyling 101) and the handle does in fact face your house.

Because we have no life whatsoever, tonight Steve and I did a drive-by-survey of recycling carts in the neighborhood (I know, it's sad, but we are morons). Our informal survey shows that Shreveport-ites have a lot to learn about recycling. We saw blue bins filled with garbage, overflowing with yard waste, sitting with crap piled on top of them, right next to phone poles, behind other trash cans, no where NEAR the requested 3 feet clearance, and WORST of all, according to our most official informal survey, about 95% of the blue carts are facing the wrong way.

We debated whether or not we should buy gold stars and put on those bins that were correctly placed; we considered that maybe the trucks should just leave the offending carts filled with yard waste and garbage until the owners get it right. We are harsh critics. We are so perfect. But in the end, we let it go and decided it will probably take everyone a few weeks to get it right. We have faith in you Shreveport! We can do this!