Everyday, the mail cometh. Some of it is good mail, some is junk mail, some is grocery ads, and some are local newspapers. All of it, for each tenant, gets piled into one hefty stack. I’ve sort of become the keeper of the mail. I get home first, and I don’t want to rummage through all of the stuff on the stoop. Therefore, I take the pile into my apartment and go through it there. I know the other tenants good enough that I can go into their apartments, say hello, and drop off their stack of mail.

Now, I know that nobody likes junk mail, and I know that they don’t rummage through the coupons and weekly grocery sales like I do. So, I sort out all of the ads and junk mail and set them aside in my apartment. I proceed to give them their share of the good mail. Why do I set this stuff aside? Well, I have a little pet peeve about throwing paper in the trash.

Some corporate entity has gone through the effort to send us some announcement which they consider of the utmost interest. Yes, Dell, I bought my computer from you, but you don’t need to tell me about your super deals each week. How many computers does one man need? And it’s not just Dell. It’s every business. I can unsubscribe and do what I can to stop it from coming, but what I hate to do is put this stuff directly in the trash. I don’t like the conceptualization that this stuff gets processed, printed, mailed, trashed, and landfilled. It’s just wasteful. Pure and simple. Where can I drop this junk off to be recycled…huh, Chicago,…where?

Chicago has a number of recycling initiatives, which aren’t conveniently convenient.

1. Drop-Off Center - only 15 centers in the city for paper, plastic, and glass and nowhere near me.
2. Blue Bag Program - you have to pay for the bags and hope the “Sanitation Engineers” don’t toss them with the regular trash when they pick them up.
3. Blue Cart Program - an experimental initiative to include recycling carts next to the regular dumpsters. (Not available in my ward)

The other other alternative (and what I’ve been using) is the ‘L’ stops. Most ‘L’ stops in the downtown area have a blue bin for depositing “newspapers only”. Is it OK for me to throw excess junk mail in these bins…I dunno. Hopefully. I usually grab the stack of paper and ads, take it with me on my way to work, and toss it in the blue bins. It’s not out of my way, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something good. \*shrug*

However, this past weekend, Roommate got on a cleaning kick. He was rearranging furniture, throwing trash out, and herding bunnies into the dust pan. He picked up my stack of papers and asked, “Are you done with these.” I told him my little recycling initiative, and he just rolled his eyes. He left the room and came back a book, Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists A Conservative Manifesto. Amazon reviews says

“Moreover, his analysis of recycling programs and their ilk gives a much-needed kick in the pants to complacent types who think their garbage sorting is helping anything but their consciences.”

I do agree that some environmentalists go too far with their actions and approximations. (Disclaimer: I’ve never seen An Inconvenient Truth). But I believe recycling is at least an effort to make things better. It’s better than throwing everything away without a seconds thought. Hard Green is on my reading list. I’m trying, Terra Mater.