Really? You Can Recycle That?

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A pizza box with a greasy liner hung out of a blue recycling bin as I walked past. Hmm, I had heard that I wasn’t supposed to recycle paper or cardboard that was contaminated with food. Would it be taken with the recycling? Or was the whole bin doomed to be passed over?

I paused to glance in the next bin—canning lids. Now there was an item that most likely is recyclable but would never go through the blue bin path to recycling in my household. I have the ultimate recycle system for canning lids—I wash them, put them on clean class jars and give them to my mother-in-law. Miraculously the glass jars return full of homemade strawberry jam—now that’s a recycling system that can’t be beat.

As I approached the next driveway, a large, grey plastic object was perched on top of the underlying contents of the bin. I stopped again—this clearly wasn’t one of my speedier walks. What was that? Upon closer inspection, I could tell it was an infant car seat. Really? Recycling an infant car seat? Not that I had any to recycle—my kids grew up in the days when we could hand down car seats and cribs—a seemingly impossibility today with the rapidly changing safety regulations. But in any case, can they really be recycled now?

I think I am a pretty thorough recycler, but clearly I am way behind if all of the items I saw filling the bins actually could be recycled—milk cartons, an easily identifiable Target shopping bag, a large clear bag stuffed with shredded paper—shredded paper yes; plastic bags, no, of that I was certain; intact cardboard boxes, more milk cartons, maybe I should be recycling them, but no juice cartons—hmm, odd distinction, or maybe no one drinks orange juice from cartons any more. A Miracle-Gro bag, Bounty paper towel plastic packaging, a plant. A plant? Oh wait, maybe that’s with the trash. I was starting to doubt that I knew anything about what could and couldn’t be recycled. A dishwasher detergent box with the metal spout intact—yes or no?

I really need to just follow a recycling truck and see what happens with all this stuff. I mean if it does belong, how in the world is it ever sorted and actually recycled? Is it? And if these items don’t belong what happens to them and everything in the bin with them? Are there people pawing through conveyor belts full of recycling stuff? Has this already been on Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe and I missed it? Clearly this would count as a dirty job. And costly too. Is it at all cost effective to put all of this in one recycling stream? I think I’ll sit on the curb and wait for the recycling truck to come by. I have some questions to ask.

Shortly After 10 pm May 1, 2011

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Shortly after 10:30 pm EDT, my iPhone buzzed with an AP breaking news tone.
“Okay, this will be another trivial news story,” I sighed as I picked up the phone. Clearly I was wrong—for once, truly breaking news that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

With iPhone in hand I immediately opened up Twitter and watched the feed continually updating. All tweets focused on the surprise forthcoming Presidential announcement and speculation.  As the president spoke these were followed by reaction, commentary and yes, humor: @TomBodett “Trump not convinced. Demands Bin Laden long-form death certificate.”

The following graph compares how my tweet feed split between tweets related to bin Laden (red line) and those not (blue line) from 7 pm on May 1 to 4 pm on May 2. I scanned back in my tweet stream. “POTUS jolts us awake with unanticipated newscast announcement” was quickly followed by people commenting on the tap-dancing of the networks as they waited for news. Within an hour, every tweet was related to the announcement. From 11 to midnight EDT my tweets scrolled quickly by, dropping off shortly after the President's TV announcement and picking up in the morning as people got back on-line.

Around 11:20 pm @Pogue apparently disembarked from a plane, and tweeted before scanning his tweet stream on an interview with Marty Cooper. The only other completely ordinary tweet that followed in the middle of the night, I actually considered directly related to the unfolding events as @hodgman retweeted @ParisHilton who was looking forward to getting back to her pets sometime after midnight east coast time.

The twitter-ether created an interactive community buzzing with personal reactions to a highly charged and momentous story as it unfolded. From humor to poignancy to patriotism to reflection, a flood of top of mind thoughts brought me close to strangers, friends I only know through twitter, newscasters whom I know, but who don’t know me—a fascinating, educated, opinionated, thoughtful, humorous, reactive group. Collectively their tweets influenced my reaction. I felt I could talk through what I was thinking and synthesize the tumult of thoughts flinging through my brain. My twitter community was far greater company than the newscasters on air trying to fill air time waiting for the President to speak, or rehashing what the President had said as they scrambled for more information.

I was put off by terms like “victory” and “celebrate”. Surely a time to reflect and be thankful an evil voice had been silenced, but I prefer to celebrate peace and hope not death and destruction. Most online shared similar sentiments even as news of people celebrating in the streets of the physical world was tweeted into our on-line community.

The Twitter-ether was alive and the Twitter community seemed to make the world a bit more interwoven and a lot smaller.