Reverse Robinhoods Can Suck It

1971 Never Looked So Good
Originally uploaded by kafkas_undies.

Maine is one of the few states that harbors the fugitive-esque legislative gaff called the deposit-refund system. The system came about much like a kidney stone: after repeated failures to pass the law, the legislature finally enacted the Maine bottle bill in 1978. Under the auspices of reducing waste by way of increased recycling, the law tacked a five cent tax onto beer and soft drink containers. In 1990, Augusta fat cats expanded the bill to include wine, liquor, bottled water, iced tea, and juice containers.

I can see your attention span shriveling quicker than an ill-suited not for children analogy, so let me get the point. And by get, I mean crawl. Part of the point is that yes, the deposit-refund system has reduced waste and yes, it has increased recycling. However, on the fiscal end, we run into a reality less ten dollar haircut and lollipop cut and dry. For starters, the bill has not been a boon to employment. 214 to 626 new jobs hardly constitute a boon, much less a spike worthy of notation. And in case you didn't know, statistical gloating of the undeserved variety is a fist down throat No. So the bottle bill has not done much for jobs in this employment-not-to-mention-living-wage-employment starved state. At the same time, it succeeded in increasing waste management costs while ignoring a giant loophole slash unenforceable-in-practical-terms inevitability. There is a substantial and growing disparity between the per ton cost of recycling curbside collected and deposit-refund waste. Rather than bore you with explanatory details, I'll bore you with something else. Namely the illogic if not stupidity that creates a system that requires national manufacturers to satisfy one state's exclusionary, cost-ineffective stipulations - not to mention the subsequent crowning of the state as broker between the two systems?! Interrobang that, Augusta.

What a crock. And that brings me to the real point.

I, like many of my neighbors, put my blue recycling bin out on a nearby curb most Tuesday nights. The gesture is not one of kinship or camaraderie, but one of Pavlovian do-gooding. Wednesday mornings the recycling truck comes and cost-effectively picks up our recyclables. The actual picking up is done by a couple gruff men. I don't envy these folks. Theirs is a shitty job. Enduring Maine's elements, inhaling exhaust fumes from a back bumper, lifting heavy bins of other people's trash, and doing it all before the sun one-twos the horizon? Yeah, I call that a shitty job.

So I do my best to help these guys out. I clean my bottles and cans, I separate the cardboard from the lighter weight paper, and I place my bin right on the curb's lip. And in this spirit of consideration, I also keep in mind the indigents who roam the streets on Tuesday nights and Wednesday mornings collecting items covered under Maine's Bottle Bill. For the indigents, I separate too. Sure, I could horde the treasures and in a few weeks, I'd have myself a bar of soap or a gallon of milk. But I don't use bar soap and I don't drink milk. Plus, I figure if my alcoholism can help a sweet old woman pay her oil bill, I'd be an alcoholic and an asshole if I didn't contribute. Now comes the real, real point.

Tonight, I spotted an asshole shithead fuckface cutting in on indigent ground. An interloper with a truck and a pair of dirty as sin eyes. This guy drives a respectable looking vehicle around the West End, stopping at blue bin curbside mounds then taking the bottles and cans that indigent immigrant ladies depend on to buy their diabetes medication. I came out tonight to place the last of my cardboard stacks in my recyclables bin and this asshole has the tail of his truck pulled into my driveway and is grabbing the bags of bottles I'd saved for the immigrant ladies. This asshole then has the gall to tell me "Oh, I'm just taking the returnables."

I stared straight into the shallow pools of guilt he calls eyes and god, how I wish I'd called him the piece of shit that he was. But being a small woman, alone, on a dark sidewalk made me reconsider and side selfishly with personal safety considerations. Instead of throwing expletives his way, I just told him he was stealing from the mouths of newborns and homeless people who don't have money for food, much less funds for a nice truck. He looked ashamed, but not enough to stop taking the bottles. I looked pissed, but not enough to take my bags back.