Well I am here to share a secret with the men of the world. You have heard the saying that there is no known case of a woman asking for a divorce while the husband is washing dishes? The same is true of recycling. I have never heard of a single incident where a woman has looked at her husband, in the throes of sorting No. 2 plastic, and said “you irritate me, I want a divorce.”
Men, this is serious now, here is an opportunity to impress your spouse without buying flowers, without breaking a sweat, without even engaging your thought processes. You don’t have to listen to long winded stories, and pretend you heard what she said, you don’t have to fight to keep from rolling your eyes, all you have to do is take a bag of plastic through a large drive through building (it’s no harder than driving through to get your morning coffee) and dumping it in the bin.
Recycle day has become “date day” in the Davis house. My husband, God bless him, has become the recycle guru, and if he doesn’t know for sure, he asks. Nothing goes in the garbage can until the following question is answered “is this recyclable?” Saturday mornings we chat about the week as we separate our plastics and bag them up. We hop into the truck and share the excitement as one of us grabs the cardboard and the other grabs the tin and glass. We dance in our seats when we know that we have recycled five bags to just one purple bag. And granted, our dance of joy would be happier if we had no purple bags, but we’re working on that.
After the trip to the recycle center, we go for a coffee, pick up the mail. It’s just our weekly date and believe it or not, I bet we have as much fun and get as much satisfaction out of that as rich people do picking out gold faucets for their kitchen sink.
You don’t need a truck, you don’t even really need a man, but with both, you are in recycle heaven. If you have never gone to the transfer station, maybe you’d want to do a dry run, just drive in one end and out the other, take a deep breath, work up the courage to step outside your comfort zone. Start with one cereal box, flatten it, drive thru, put it in the cardboard truck. Read all the signs, pick up a brochure so you can be sure what you can and can’t recycle. Now breathe. Let is out slow, come on, you can do it. There, didn’t that feel awesome?
Cathy Davis is a member of the Houlton recycling committee. She can be reached at scruffydogsmom@gmail.com
