Recycling....

Around my neighborhood, I've noticed an increasing number of people making the trek to the Berkeley Recycling Center. Pulling their shopping cars behind them, sometimes two bungee-corded together, like a train. For a couple of years now, I see these people on a daily basis, all heading west, towards the Bay. But they stop short of the sparkling waters which lead out to the Golden Gate Bridge. Their destination instead is the Berkeley Recycling Center, where bottles and cans are turned in for a few dollars.

When I was so fortunate as to live "up the hill," I would hear the tumble of bottles in the night, breaking the dark quiet before the trash and recycling trucks came by. When I began to look, I saw people, the people who were raiding our trash and recycling bins. Some neighbors got angry -- "if they take all the recycling, the city can't afford curbside pickup!" Perhaps they weren't angry, just practical....Perhaps they were all just being practical....

After I moved off the hill, and my own financial situation was shrinking, (just ahead of the trend which has now overtaken most of us), I used to fantasize that if I needed to, I could collect discarded paper and bottles from the offices in the suburb where I worked -- and where the office buildings, incredibly, were not required to recycle -- and haul it in the back of my van to the Recycling Center in Berkeley. My job out there (in those removed suburbs) ended before I added "recycling" to my resume....

A while back I was going to pick up my daughter from her best friend's house. There was a young woman pulling a full shopping cart (filled not with food but with recycling); her baby -- toddler-age -- was perched on the handle. It was an unwieldy load and it brought tears to my eyes. I was just about to lose my job. I was supporting my three teenagers. I could see myself in that procession. Hastily I stopped my van. I had two single dollar bills and gave them to the woman; I briefly explained why I couldn't give her more. A few tears rolled down her cheeks. She told me how hard it was trying to take care of her child and earn a few dollars here and there. We agreed the only thing to do was keep on going, one foot after another. We shared a laugh (at the expense of people who didn't understand how hard it was to keep going) and then me made our separate ways down the street.

Recycler pushers now seem to travel in loose packs. People by the twos and tens, heading down little side streets and major boulevards, towing their precious scavenged cargo. Last week at dusk I saw a slim man who was dressed as BZ usually dresses for work: pants and a button down shirt, rolled up to his elbows. But this man wasn't going to an office, or to any other "regular" job. He was towing an overflowing shopping cart that must have outweighed him, making his way to the Recycling Center so he could get a few dollars for his dinner....