Setting Up a Box in the Break Room

Once I was taking Environmental Science, I kicked it into a higher gear. I became what you might call, burdened with awareness. I started thinking about my waste, as well as the magnitude of others. I thought about where the bottles and cans in the trash might end up in. A landfill? The local wash? The lake? I would see a bottle in the gutter on my way to work, and it would pop into my mind later in the day during my shift.

I would see so many cans and bottles in the break room trash when I went to toss something. So, I put up a box on the counter by the trash can. I wrote recycling on it and made a point to throw my recycling in there, hoping people would notice and catch on. If I was leaving the break room and someone had an empty bottle on the table next to them, I’d ask if they were finished, and put it in the box for them. If there wasn’t anyone in the break room, or at least anyone who would have judged me, I would put recycling out of the trash and put it into my box.

Pretty soon, when I went home every day, I would have my bag of newspapers, and between three to four bags of recycling, I’d collected throughout the day. The people at the door got used to me and my recycling and would save their bottles for me to take at the end of my shift! They’d even collect a couple from customers who were about to toss them!

It was amazing seeing the slight change in the people around me as a result of my actions.

Devoting My Car to This Project

As you can imagine, with collecting more and more recycling, my car would get pretty full. And some days, by the time I got home, I was just too tired to carry the bags up the stairs. I got into the habit of just keeping the bags in there until it was my day off.

Those days I’d get up in the morning to make my coffee, and then go downstairs and pull everything all at once. I’d sit in the dining room drinking coffee and sorting recycling into the appropriate boxes.

If I had a friend in the car, I would always apologize for the mess, knowing full well it would be in the same condition the next time, even if it was different bags of recycling. At one point I had a friend tell me it was fine, and they were “just living in my world”. It made me feel comforted, to feel acceptance about myself as a person and for what I was doing.

My boyfriend would nag me constantly about the trash. Every time we took my car somewhere, he would look in the back at the recycling and give this big sigh. He means well, and I know he’s right to be annoyed at it. I’m thankful for his objectivity about it. He doesn’t mind that I’m recycling, he just wants me to keep my car clean. And I can understand that. Most sane people would want to keep their car as clean and clutter free as possible and would probably not even be doing what I’m doing in the first place.

But I’ve always been bad at keeping things clean, at least consistently; it would take me weeks to muster the motivation to really clean my room and not do it superficially. And I rationalize with myself that as long as I don’t let it get out of hand, it’s fine. I tell myself it’s okay to leave it in the car when I get home because I’m exhausted. And even if I had the energy to carry them up the stairs, I wouldn’t have the energy to then sort them at that time. Which would mean that my home would start looking shabby.

No, better my car than my dining room. I may not have people over often, but my roommate did, and I didn’t want to look like TOO much of a slob.

And so my car became part of my recycling hub. Whether it be taking it home to sort or transporting it to the places it needed to be taken. I was devoted now. And even if I was slightly embarrassed by it, I wasn’t about to stop.

Getting Over Pulling Recycling from the Trash

The next evolutionary phase of my recycling was getting over taking visible cans and bottles out of the trash, regardless of what my coworkers might think. I started off slow, and concisely. If I was throwing out a paper towel from drying my hands, I would use the paper towel to grab things that were sitting in plain view. I didn’t dig through the trash, and I used a paper towel, so it was okay for me to do this, I said to myself as I rationalized my actions.

And even though over time, as I got more ballsy about it, and people at work got more accustomed to me reaching in there, it wasn’t until another woman at work started helping me that I truly got over the qualms about picking the trash.

This older woman who worked in a different department than me, would bring me bottles SHE found in the trash! She would tell me about how every time she went into the break room she had to fish things out of the trash! She told me that she lived in California a long time, and that she understood how important it was to recycle.

She would scold the people who laughed at her for pulling recycling; told them if they lived in California, they’d understand. She’d tell them they needed to start being aware of their waste.

My hero.

She inadvertently helped me get over my embarrassment about what I was doing. I began doing it more and more, not caring who was looking. I started to habitually look in every trash can I passed in my store to see if there was recycling. Just a glance. I wouldn’t actually reach in unless there was something visible. I made sure to wash my hands every time. In the breakroom I might move the top layer over a bit to see if there were any hidden bottles or cans.

It has now become second nature. As it has become to the people who I work with, at least the ones that have been there long enough. Every so often, when we get new associates, I catch the surprised looks from them as I walk into the break room, spot a bottle in the trash, and pull it out, and put it into my box. But just like everyone else, they get over it. They might even hand me a bottle in passing somewhere in the store.

These new kids we’ve hired recently, fresh out of high school; their enthusiasm is great. They adore my mission. They ask me questions about why I recycle, where I take it to, and ask if they can bring me their recycling from home if they don’t have a bin where they live. They save me their recycling and make sure it gets to me. It does my heart good.

I’ve gotten to the point now where I have this hope, this idea, that one out of maybe twenty people will see me pull a bottle from the trash and self-reflect on themselves in some way. After their initial surprise or confusion of seeing me, this short girl wearing a skirt reaching into a trash can, or picking up a bottle from the parking lot, perhaps they’ll consider something about what I’m doing. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll try to change something in their life regarding waste.

Most likely people look at me like I’m crazy, maybe even disgusting. Maybe they’re right. But even if they are right, I’d rather be “wrong”. I can wash my hands. I carry hand sanitizer on me just in case I need to grab recycling. Most people will never see me again, so they can have their negative view of me, a stranger, and keep it.

Even if my actions change only one person’s perception of things, then I believe I have done an amazing thing.