My county holds a hazardous waste cleanup twice a year. In the spring, I put a box of no-longer needed chemicals in my car and headed down to the county complex, only to discover there was a line out to and down the highway. They have a pretty great process, but having been there before, I am wise to their Magic Kingdom setup. The line you see divides and becomes two lines out of sight from the highway and with no way to escape. I didn’t have the time for a Disney adventure that day; I took the chemicals back home for another six months.
Today, with nothing specific on my agenda, I figured I had time to get rid of the stuff once and for all. Two crossword puzzles, a newspaper and cell phone games later, I passed off my little box of hazards to a gloved, white-suited collector. You don’t even get out of the car. So when you get to the actual collection spot, it actually is pretty efficient. But that turned out to be an hour and 25 minutes.
Now, I’m an environmentalist, so I’ll put up with that in order to do the right thing. But I wonder how many more people would dispose of their haz waste properly if it didn’t take nearly 90 minutes of their precious time. I should have made an estimate of the cars waiting in line while I was there…I’d guess at least a hundred. I was struck by the irony that all those cars idling away for 90 minutes spewed out tons of CO2 harming the environment, in the name of protecting the environment by disposing of haz waste correctly. For the record, I turned my car off when I got to each holding pen.
You have to make it easy for people to be green, but in spite of the fact this wasn’t easy, I was impressed by how many of my neighbors cared enough to do like I did, and wait in a 90 minute line. I mused that this was also in a ‘red’ county that voted for Trump – you know, the same people who are alleged to hate the environment. At this time in history when generalizations are running rampant it’s helpful to recall this quote – attributed to Mark Twain, but also some others: All generalizations are false, including this one.”
Today, with nothing specific on my agenda, I figured I had time to get rid of the stuff once and for all. Two crossword puzzles, a newspaper and cell phone games later, I passed off my little box of hazards to a gloved, white-suited collector. You don’t even get out of the car. So when you get to the actual collection spot, it actually is pretty efficient. But that turned out to be an hour and 25 minutes.
Now, I’m an environmentalist, so I’ll put up with that in order to do the right thing. But I wonder how many more people would dispose of their haz waste properly if it didn’t take nearly 90 minutes of their precious time. I should have made an estimate of the cars waiting in line while I was there…I’d guess at least a hundred. I was struck by the irony that all those cars idling away for 90 minutes spewed out tons of CO2 harming the environment, in the name of protecting the environment by disposing of haz waste correctly. For the record, I turned my car off when I got to each holding pen.
You have to make it easy for people to be green, but in spite of the fact this wasn’t easy, I was impressed by how many of my neighbors cared enough to do like I did, and wait in a 90 minute line. I mused that this was also in a ‘red’ county that voted for Trump – you know, the same people who are alleged to hate the environment. At this time in history when generalizations are running rampant it’s helpful to recall this quote – attributed to Mark Twain, but also some others: All generalizations are false, including this one.”