Throwing it all away

I think sometimes about the vast cultural differences between Silicon Valley, California where we used to live (not an actual city, but an area in the San Francisco bay area) and where we are now in Pennsylvania, the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Back when we lived in Silicon Valley in California, we got very good at recycling.

That's because in the municipality where we lived our trash allotment was tiny. Really. I'm not exaggerating, much, when I say our regular trash bin that the city said we could put out for the trash men each week was the size of a plastic pail you'd take to the beach to make sandcastles. But our recycling bin could probably fit a dozen bodies.

We could pay for stickers to put on extra trash bags, but it felt like throwing away money.

So we memorized the giant recycling poster we got from the city. We knew every single item that could go in there. Our bus-sized recycling bin was filled to the roof every week. We were the equivalent of PhDs in recycling.

When my mother would come to visit from Philadelphia, she found it all so intimidating that she took any trash that she generated to the nearby supermarket to dispose of in their outdoor trashcans. Seriously.

Flashforward: we move to a suburb of Philadelphia -- a progressive one that has installed microchips in the recycling bins. When the men come around every week to pick up our recycling, the truck weighs our bin and digitally records how much recycling we have.

Then our suburb awards us with credits based on our volume of recycling. The more recycling, the more credits.  But they weren't really ready for the likes of us.

Now, most of our neighbors could use their credits for a $10 gift card to Home Depot. But we have received many many gift cards, t-shirts, and coupons. We may soon bankrupt our suburb. Maybe why there is now a $400 cap on the rewards that can be received.

Indeed, as California-trained recyclers we are so good that if we got cash instead of credits, and if it wasn't capped at $400 of awards, at least one of us could probably quit his or her job.

Comments

[Antropologa]

In Sweden it's the opposite--they have really complicated recycling and FINE you a ton if you get it wrong!