Just Ask Ava: Recycling Shame

 

Dear Ava Hart,

 

Being green is really getting to me. At school I always do double-sided printing, bring my soup in a thermos and never use PET bottles, but at home, despite serious effort, I cannot get the recycling here. My pred left me a massive poster with all the sorting info and collection dates, although it’s so yellow it might be from his pred six years ago… Anyway, I take the plastic off the bottles, wash the cans, hang my cartons to dry on the washing line, EVERYTHING. Honestly, I’m so freaked out by the cockroach danger that I’m a bit OCD about it all. But still the grandma on the corner seems to find something wrong and drops my trash bags back at my door in secret overnight almost every time,  which means I miss the collection every other week. I’ve totally stopped trying to recycle glass, and all my wine bottles by the back door started an awkward conversation when a JTE came by – did I mention I live within sight of school? Not such a good thing.

I’ve tried stealth recycling at midnight, but the lady has ears like a bat because the trash is still returned, even though she won’t admit to doing it!

In summer the fridge was full of banana peel by trash day and I took plastic bags of trash to throw away at school so my house didn’t stink of warm garbage for an extra week!

Winter’s tough, I eat more so there’s more packaging to ditch, but it’s so cold I go to the supermarket less so can’t safely get rid of the plastic boxes. At least the trash only smells when I put it by the gas heater – and then I really know the house is full.

 

I know it’s not eco-friendly to complain about recycling, but I don’t think I can cope much longer. The thought of spring and all the fruit flies coming back brings me out in a cold sweat. Please help.

Shamed in Shiso

 

 

Dear Shamed,

 

I cannot say I have ever suffered from the same issue; my cosmopolitan lifestyle comes complete with maid service, and ‘trash’ and ‘garbage’ do not feature in my vocabulary. However, I can empathise with the odour issue, my sentiments are similar on the rare occasion I enter a subterranean transport system. It sounds to me like you’re making every reasonable effort to comply with local practice – heavy drinking included in the inaka. As such, I suggest two solutions to deal with your pesky snoop. First, the friendly approach: get crafty with your recyclables. No, not for yourself, you are not a five year-old. Channel all your creative powers into a delightful hand-made, eco-friendly [and therefore necessarily ugly] gift for your meddlesome neighbour. Perhaps a necklace of ring-pulls or a headband adorned with plastic egg nests – if Instagram is to believed, cat-ear headwear is frightfully à la mode [do please note the adverb].

Option two from my dear friend Candida Sole: the threat. Nothing so crass as a face-à-face showdown, this is all about subtlety. For the next collection date, ensure your receptacles are filled with explicit evidence of your close yakuza connections. Nothing incriminating of course, but just enough to make it quite clear who she’s dealing with; the added bonus being, of course, that she can’t inform on you without admitting to her dustbin delving, and if she braves it then she’s the one to look the fool. Unless of course your underworld ties are true, in which case option one’s art and crafts make for a fantastic cover.

 

Scented and serene,

 

Ava Hart