I’ve been saving my recycling to take to my building’s recycling bin when I empty my trash, but the years keep rolling and I haven’t filled a load of trash. I’m going to bring my recycling to my building’s recycling bins.

I haven’t kept track of when I last emptied my recycling. I think it was more recent than my trash. Here’s the plastic, glass, and metal from I believe about two years. If you agree this much is disgustingly too much, I hope you’re also reducing your contribution. Many days I pick up this much in my daily picking up litter. That I contributed less in two years than many people do in a few minutes in Washington Square Park, as in the videos and pictures here, doesn’t change that any amount over zero hurts people unnecessarily and so I consider too much.

Metal, Glass, and Plastic

Paper

Some Comments on Where It Came From

See the Fresh Direct box? I’ve never bought from Fresh Direct. I must have gotten the box from a neighbor’s leaving it in the building recycling. I also haven’t bought or drunk Gatorade since maybe the 1990s. I got that bottle and the water bottle similarly for a bike ride. The can I found unopened when picking up litter and figured, why not drink it, it’s sealed? The wine bottle I opened to share with friends when we got together for the first time since before the pandemic. I’d saved that bottle for a special occasion and bought it in France, which means I’d been saving it since the 1990s.

Most pieces have some story, but none came from me spending money contributing to producing new waste since I started avoiding packaged food.

Nearly All Recycling Is Garbage and a Scam

People commonly believe that recycling is closer to benign than outright trash. With rare exception, recycling is pure waste and pollution. Most so-called compostable packaging is too.

Nearly everything labeled recyclable is unnecessary. It’s disposable and didn’t need to be created. Nearly anything you think you need that’s recyclable, you can do without. Thinking otherwise is nearly always a failure of your imagination or connection to traditional societies that have existed for tens to hundreds of thousands of years without recycling programs.

I am ashamed to any extent I contributed to the system that created recyclables since their manufacture, recycling, and disposal pollutes and therefore hurts people. I did little to none of that contribution in these items.

Here’s another angle for the recycling:

• ← Cities aren’t loud, cars and air conditioners are
• Discarded Electric Vehicles →