I consider myself a somewhat conscientious guy when it comes to recycling. Pop cans go in the recycling bin, as do glass bottles and soup cans. Paper too, but only certain types. We don’t have a compost because of the size of our backyard, but I still save what I can for use in the garden and so on. I won’t claim that my environmental footprint is tiny, but I try to be aware of my effect on the world around me. Or at least I thought I was. Nearly four years ago, I experienced a culture shock when it comes to recycling.
A trip to Prince Edward Island yielded beautiful scenery, a lovely drive through four provinces, and plenty of family time. It also yielded the most complicated recycling notice I’ve ever seen.
On the fridge and the table of the house we had rented near Stanhope was a double-sided, colour-coded, pictogram-laden chart of recycling. Blue bags, clear bags, green bags, green bins, clear bags, and more – all so confusing for this simple writer from Ontario.
Not only did I need to separate plastic and paper, but there was seven types of plastic to sort. Cans had to be washed. Food waste was to be separated from normal waste. Oh, and don’t cheat. All the bags are see through and the paper warned that inspected bags that had recycled materials being thrown out would be rejected. I thought this was supposed to be a vacation?
After seeking the Rosetta Stone to translate the PEI Pictograms into common English, I was reminded of a TV show that used to be on, but whose name I cannot use in print. The short form name is called BS, and the show was the brainchild of the magician duo of Penn and Teller. Each week, they would take on some topic or issue and use their comedic wit and knowledge to cut through the bovine by-product to verify the truth. One episode tackled the recycling issue, dispelling some myths but also showing that many people genuinely are trying to do right – no matter how convoluted the process.
An experiment in the show asked some families how far they would go in separating their recyclables, offering up to 10 different sorting options for types of recycling. The unsuspecting families never broke, and just accepted the explanation for the new bin and what they were willing to sort. I felt like Penn Gillette was going to walk through my kitchen door to tell me I was on a follow-up episode as I used the secret decoder ring and Rosetta Stone to read the PEI recycling guide.
But it wasn’t so bad. By the time our family concluded the week-long vacation, everyone in the family was throwing what was needed into the appropriate bag or bin. Curbside recycling was put out along with a tiny bag of trash without issue. And we didn’t get it wrong.
I was notified recently by a reader of Wanderings that I had it wrong with recycling certain types of paper. When I wrote my column, I had said that politicians were printing taxpayer-paid propaganda that was going straight from people’s mailboxes to the garbage bin – and that said propaganda was on paper that could not be recycled.
This reader, who is in the printing industry, pointed out the paper could be recycled. Mea culpa. I was wrong. Political mailings that spam your mailbox can in fact be recycled.
That still doesn’t change the fact that tax dollars are being used by elected officials to spam mailboxes. And it doesn’t change the fact that most of this propaganda spam is immediately thrown away. Kent’s correction to my column only gives readers a better option for disposing of those money-burning exercises – the recycling bin. And this writer learns a little more.
Back to recycling, what I learned from the trip to PEI – besides my need to put my toes in the sand more often – is that sorting more recycling isn’t difficult once you get your mind around it. It doesn’t take that much more space than before, and it may help with reusing materials instead of just throwing everything away. I take solace now in the knowledge that I can also recycle political mail too. Recycle everything, and let someone else sort it out.
Column originally published in the January 25, 2023 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.