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Let me try to explain something here. I would never have had aproblem with the chore we’ve been assigned if a vital need toconserve essential natural resources was the given it’s assumedto be and if the claim that recycling saves significantquantities of natural resources was true. But the importance andvalue of recycling is dubious at best. Summarily ignored, anumber of reports (including one in The New York Times) revealedearly on that, in fact, we’re not running out of the substancesrecycling is intended to save. What’s more—and this applies tononbiodegradable materials that end up as landfill as well as toorganic elements—even the industry’s own published (anddoubtless exaggerated) figures make it clear that what therecycling process manages to salvage is of no real consequence.So while I’ll allow that self-immolation would constitute adisproportionate form of protest, I have to say that reactingwith less than indignation to so gratuitous an imposition wouldalso be inappropriate. (Particularly when you consider thatnowhere in the notice was there mention of a tax rebate forperforming what, if it’s to be performed at all, should properlyhave been a function of the Department of Sanitation from thebeginning.)

It’s obviously not as dramatic, but this recycling business hadalways reminded me of the so-called “oil crisis” of the lateseventies. Remember that? Remember how we were told flat outthat after decades of witless gorging on a finite resource we’dall but depleted the world of fossil fuels? Remember how, to besure that we got the message, we were made to endure franticweeks of gasoline rationing and reduced thermostat levels?

(I know that my senator then, Senator D’Amato will want to cutin here to tell me this was before “Jurassic Park” came out andthat at the time we didn’t realize we could make more.

Yessir. That’s an...interesting...point. But, and with all duerespect, SIT THE FUCK DOWN!—it’s beside the point I was making.Okay?)

The point I was making is that the whole thing was a setup toget us to accept inflated petroleum prices. There was, it turnedout, enough oil left under just the backyards of Kuwait’s Emirand Mobil’s CEO to run our quadrant of the galaxy AND keep PatRiley splendidly coifed for another century or two.

Now I’m aware that it’s not that easy to resist scams like this,even when they’ve been run on us before and there is goodevidence to belie the premise on which they’re based. Beingmortal, knowing that—at any time and in any number of ways—themost terrible thing that can happen is definitely going tohappen, we are obliged to grant at least the possibility ofsubstance to all but the most patently ridiculous warnings of animpending catastrophe. (And, having been handed at birth asentence reserved for the worst of crimes, we’re not only primedto accept the blame for catastrophes, but more than ready tosuffer a little redemptive inconvenience as well.)

Still—Jesus!—as difficult as it may be to defend against ourinnate susceptibility to manipulation, we could make a bettereffort. At the very minimum we could reduce the frequency withwhich we’re victimized by keeping the batteries fresh in ourbullshit detectors and never forgetting that, more often thannot, the “emergencies” we’re presented with have an agendabehind them.

Recycling, for example, isn’t about saving the planet. (And no,it’s not even about making money for somebody—not really.) It’sabout winning the personal salvation (indeed, the recycling) ofthe limited and earnest types who proposed and continue toinsist on it. These people are coming from the secret hope thatif they suck up to nature by not wasting any of it, nature willreturn the favor and arrange to perpetuate their existence insome other package once their current status expires.

Well I, for one, don’t appreciate it when people conscript meinto the service of their personal immortality projects,especially when they masquerade as humanitarians.

It’s not that I would, for a minute, begrudge them such areward. But given its size I think they should be forced to earnit on their own, with no assistance from the rest of us. I can’tspeak for nature, of course, but if they stopped by my place acouple of times a week to do their sorting/rinsing thing thatwould certainly impress ME.

I didn’t say anything about them coming into the house. Alongwith the trash, I’ll leave my garden hose unraveled behind theshed. They’re more than welcome to go back there and rinseanything it pleases them to rinse.

About the author:Robert Levin is a former contributor to The Village Voice andRolling Stone and the coauthor and coeditor, respectively, oftwo collections of essays about rock and jazz in the '60s:"Music & Politics" and "Giants of Black Music."

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