BASTARDS HAD TO PUT THEIR FINGER IN MY EYE NOW I’M HOT

They just won’t leave me alone and nobody can say I went looking for this fight. The bastards seek me out, I know. So there I am calmly going about my business in the Amazon Jungle. When along comes an innocent looking brochure from the City of Courtenay. If you have never been here, this group is, to say the least, a little “left” of me. They include, of all people, the pizza delivery man, who was so roundly elected by his peers. Now I have nothing against good hard working pizza deliverymen and can only applaud anyone that works, anywhere.

However at the same time I can’t imagine the vast scope of experience he might have. That qualifies him to form ideas for the running of this city or for that matter even a two trailer, park. Enough of that, I calmly open this latest missive from The City of Courtenay. The subject is Residential Waste Collection. Oh goody I think maybe they will address the reason that some items were left in my Recycle Basket, the last time they picked it up. Items that all appeared to be primo candidates for recycle. These leftovers included a magazine, a couple of shopping bags from Super Store, a couple of spaghetti bags. Hmmmmm I thought,” he must have just forgot them”. Not so, I come to find out!

The brochure (that is made, apparently, of non recyclable paper) is specifically addressed to my leftovers of last week. It starts with big pictures of things you are allowed to recycle. These pictures take up 75% of the brochure and include 19 items. I am reading with great interest. Then I realize that it does not show any of the items that I would normally recycle. I can feel my guts churning, and I quickly reach for my Atenolol and crunch down about 10. Sweat is suddenly running between my shoulder blades and I am gonna explode. Below these space consuming, pictures of the few items you are allowed to recycle, in very small print, are 30, get that, 30 items that you can no longer put in the recycle bins.

This list includes almost everything that I want to recycle. Things such as paper gift wrap, rubber, soft cover books, paper towels, plastic bags used to cover newspapers, plastic bags and overwrap, (I can throw the cardboard egg carton, but not the plastic it comes wrapped in, geezus), pasta bags, cereal bags, candy wrappers, glass of any description, plastic shipping envelopes, bubble wrap, Zip Lock bags, and it goes on. WOW they have just taken away 90% of what I need to recycle. On a bright note, you can recycle some paper if you first shred it (with the shredder you bought just for this purpose)and if you then separate it into clear bags.

Hmmmmm, the only clear bags I have are made of plastic. Which was already forbidden out of the other side of their mouths. Now I just wanna take my rope and find a tree to go hang myself in, however I cut all my trees and there’s not one, tall enough, left standing in our yard. On top of this I have been forbade from going off our property, so I can’t even use the neighbours tree. I know what I’ll do (see below).

Now, you might say, there must be a good rational for this seemingly ridiculous limiting of previously good recycle materials. Let me see if I can come up with some;

They want to cut recycle pickup costs and thereby save more of your tax dollars, with which to pay themselves more.
The City wants to limit the recyclable materials to those items that have the highest return for resale.
The City would like to tell you what types of food to eat by eliminating certain types of packaging. I noticed Pizza boxes were not mentioned on either list.
The City wants to reduce sorting cost at the recycle yard in order to keep more of your taxes for higher pay
The regular “garbage” pickup crews are not busy enough because everyone is recycling, so they need to drum up some extra work for them
The City is trying to say that the people in this are are too dumb to know not to throw inorganic materials in the recycle, so they will now not pickup any of your clean recycle. I’m sure they are getting things like car batteries, dead rats, and truck bodies in the little blue recycle boxes, pretty often.
The City never did give a shit about the environment and recycling. It has become to much work and needs to go

My guess is, that it’s “all of the above”. What say you? In my case I think I’ll seek out another solution to my anger. SEE BELOW.