The Three Rs

There are big, big changes afoot for rappyamhappy in the next few months. I'll get into them at a later date, but these changes have caused me to examine a number of things a little more carefully.

The first thing I've become ultra-aware of is the environment and my contribution towards its demise. Having moved to Toronto right around the time that the city and its suburbs began recycling on a mass scale, I essentially grew up with recycling as a default. If I couldn't find a recycling bin in which to toss my can of Coke, I'd be wracked with guilt with the thought of tossing it in the garbage. Not only does almost everything get recycled in Toronto today, they even have compost collection! My parents started composting years before the city caught on to the need, so I was aware of the process, but I applaud the GTA for implementing it en masse. Today my parents toss out about a grocery bag's worth of garbage every week, recycling and composting everything else.

As I write this, I'm listening to the sounds of the garbage truck driving by on my suburban Tel Aviv street. Garbage is collected here three times a week (it's collected daily in Tel Aviv itself; in Toronto, by way of comparison, garbage is collected ONCE A WEEK), with each truck operated by three people, plus one person whose job it is to go into the yards of individual apartment buildings to take the garbage bins out to the street. On a personal, resigned level, I'm blase about the whole process now, because I know I can't expect any better, but on a conceptual level, it infuriates me.

I can't find the article to confirm this, but a while back I read an article in Haaretz newspaper, quoting some sort of recycling figure that literally made me snort (recycling figures from the Ministry of the Environment can be found here). Mostly because it was in the low double-digits, a ridiculously inflated figure. The reason for this is that the Israeli government thinks that its citizen are complete and utter morons. This is unsurprising, given the people who "run" this country, but I digress.

The only mass scale recycling that goes on in this country is of plastic bottles. There are big "cages" (the Ministry of the Environment likes to call them "receptacles", but everyone here refers to them as cages) spread on various street corners throughout the country, into which you can toss your plastic bottles for recycling (more details regarding these cages can be found here). The closest cage to my house is about half a kilometer away, meaning that in order for me to recycle I have to hoard my bottles somewhere in my tiny apartment until I can find time to go to the cage. Then I have to walk around with bags precariously filled with bottles. Once I toss the bottles into the cages, which must be done one-by-one, through small round holes in the cage, I'm left with a selection of plastic bags in hand. Since I normally go to the recycling cage when I'm on my way somewhere, I have nowhere to put the empty bags except the garbage. Because why should the cages include a solution for recycling the plastic bags, really?

All of this, by the way, is applicable only to larger plastic bottles. Let's examine the process for smaller (under 1l) bottles. In 2001, Israel implemented the Deposit Law on Beverage Containers. Essentially, prices for all small bottles were raised by 25 agorot (1 NIS = 100 agorot, approximately 6 US cents), considered a "deposit". Upon consuming the contents, the bottles could (conceptually) be returned for a 25 agorot refund.

At the time that the law was implemented, the only place you could go to claim your refund was the grocery store. Sounds easy, right? So in theory, I could buy a bottle of iced tea, drink it while I was shopping, and then hand it over to the cashier and ask for my refund. In theory. In practice, the grocery stores would only accept bottles in multiples of 10 in order to issue a refund (and in most cases, not even a refund - store credit, forcing me to continue to shop there). So after finishing my bottle of iced tea, I would have to find somewhere to store it, take it home and start a collection to reach 10 bottles. And so I did, happily collecting bottles willy-nilly in anticipation of my refund. I'd toss the bottle of iced tea in there, followed by an Eden water bottle, a Neviot water bottle, and assorted other bottles. Once I'd reach the longed for quantity, I would happily make my way to my local grocery store (hereinafter: HELL), approach the head cashier with my loot, and politely ask for my 5 NIS. (Because for a whole 5 NIS, it's really worth getting out of the house, you see).

The cashier would take one look at my bag of goods and respond with an emphatic "No". "Why not?" I would ask. "They all have to be the same kind of bottle," she would respond. HUH? So in order for me to get my money back, I'd have to buy 10 bottles of Eden, 10 bottles of Neviot, 10 bottles of iced tea? Is that how this is supposed to work, I'm supposed to over-consume in order to meet your strict standards? Suffice it to say, at this point I started tossing my smaller bottles into the cages with my larger bottles, when I managed to get to the cages, that is. More often than not, I'm embarrassed to say, I just tossed the bottles in the garbage, because recycling became SUCH A HASSLE.

That was one way of handling this ridiculous process. Another was the enterprising concept of opening "recycling storefronts". Some of Israel's leading crime enterprising families opened up "recycling centres", in which they would take any bottles you wanted to give, without the aforesaid sorting hassles. The only catch was that they'd only pay you 20 agorot per bottle. A miniscule loss for the citizen, a massive gain for the criminals environmentally conscientious owners. Did I happen to mention that two of Israel's leading enterprising families have turned this venture into their main area of contention?

In light of all of the above, the Israeli clown posse government, decided to extend the deposit law to all bottles, bowing down to pressure from the ultra-orthodox community, which is characterized by massive consumption of family-sized bottled beverages and a very low levels of employment motivation income.

I'm particularly amused by this quote:

"Since the law was put into effect it has raised ire within the ultra-Orthodox community because it did not include 1.5 liter containers. Leaders in the ultra-Orthodox community have argued that the law excludes customers from large families, who typically buy the larger, family-size bottles, and therefore cannot receive the 25 agorot refund."

Um, hello? THEY WILL RAISE THE PRICE BY THE AMOUNT OF THE "REFUND", YOU MORONS!"

All of the above goes to show why recycling is bound to never succeed in this country. (Let us not even go into recycling such things as glass, aluminum or paper.) Instead of making recycling easy and convenient, it is layered with hardships and stupidity. I don't need to be "paid" to recycle and I don't think the vast majority of Israelis are looking to make a killing (if you'll pardon the pun) on returning plastic bottles. What we need is to have recycling bins right next to our garbage bins, and trucks that are equipped to collect both simultaneously; or alternatively, give up one day of garbage collection in favour of recycling collection.

I mean, really, it's not like Israeli authorities need to INVENT recycling practices. All they need to do is copy the processes that have been successfully implemented and refined over the past twenty years in the majority of the developed world.

All of this is to say that in light of the non-existent recycling facilities, I've been really careful with what I actually consume. With the reduce/reuse/recycle mantra in mind, and knowing that the latter is largely unavailable, I've been trying to focus on reducing and reusing. In general, I'm trying to buy less, of everything, and I'm trying to reuse what I have. Plastic bottles at home get refilled with tap water or with home-made ice tea. Plastic bags are taken when I go for groceries or produce, in order to avoid bringing in more plastic into my house (I laud the city of San Francisco for recently banning the use of plastic shopping bags). Being friendly to the environment is not only about the health of the planet, it's also about personal health, a topic I'll expand on at a later date.

Posted by raptorgirl at May 24, 2007 10:26 AM