In 1954, people just took out the trash.

They didn’t think about what was in it. They didn’t have multiple containers, each having a different purpose.

So my parents would need some explanation for the recycling containers that would show up on their front lawn in the 21st century.

Recycling in some form has been around for a very long time. Up until the 1960s, glass bottles for milk and soda/pop went back to the store for a penny or two. And people who endured World War II were well aware of scrap metal and rubber drives to provide materiel for the Allied forces.

But companies moved away from glass – it does have a nasty ability to shatter – and toward plastic, aluminum and cardboard. Deposits virtually disappeared and other forms of packaging showed up in landfills.

The environmental movement and the gas crises of the 1970s helped popularize recycling. The idea was not only to stop the clutter and pollution caused by all that packaging and, at the same time, save money because using recycled material for packaging was cheaper than using virgin material.

So people each week go through the process of sorting. Where I live, bottles and cans go in the green pail, paper stuff in the blue box.

And then the town recycling truck comes every Monday and dumps all of it into the same place.

If they’re going to sort it themselves at the collection facility, why the hell do they make us use separate containers?

Sorry for the tangent. 

Supposedly, recycling saves us money and is helping battle climate change and overcrowded landfills. Those are noble goals – I guess I just wonder why people didn’t think of this back when my parents took the glass bottles back to the store and thought what a pain in the neck that was.