Friday, June 30, 2006

It's pretty clear that I'm not going to update this thing on any sort of regular basis. I'm either too lazy, find the whole process entirely too self-indulgent, or some combination of the two. Strangely though, the one topic that seems to inspire me to blog (besides my occasional gratuitous self-promotion) is the environment - in particular, the recycling idiosyncrasies of wherever I happen to be living. (For those who've haven't been following from the beginning, my previous rant on this topic can be found here.)
New York likes to think of itself as the capital of the world. And in many ways it is. Money, glamour, excess - it's all here, in abundance. New York also likes to think of itself as a progressive haven. "USA Out Of New York" was a slogan that got thrown around a bit after the last presidential election. There's no shame here in looking down at the rest of the country for whatever reason - lack of geopolitical foresight, lowbrow dining preferences, trucker hats worn without irony, etc. And don't even get New Yorkers started on the environment. Hell, New York progressives even forced Bloomberg to reinstitute plastic and glass recycling in 2003, despite the fact that the program was a financial loss. Three cheers for us. No one's cooler.

The problem is that it's all bullshit. New York City is the most environmentally hypocritical place I've ever been. It's all talk, no action. Sure, there are bins for glass and plastic recycling outside of every apartment building. But no one uses them. NYC's homeless community makes a killing off of deposit bottles harvested from trash cans, not recycling bins. Waste is everywhere. Where else in the world can you buy a can of soda and get a bag, a straw, and a dozen napkins to go with it? Don't want the bag? No problem - the guy at the bodega will be happy to throw it away for you. Where else in the world is every single store air conditioned, but every single door is left wide open so as to be more inviting to customers? If you stay close enough to the store fronts, you can literally stay cool on the sidewalk in 90+ degree heat. What's going on?
The explanation for all of this is simple. If you have ten extra seconds to sort your trash, then you clearly aren't busy enough. And if you're not busy enough, then you're clearly not Making It In The Big City. If you can afford the extra time it takes to open the door to a store, then you must not have enough to do. And even if you actually don't have enough to do, you'd certainly never want to display that publicly. Then people might not take you seriously, thereby decreasing your chances of Making It In The Big City. It's the same reason no one here does their own laundry. It's the same reason no one here cooks their own food. Everyone's too busy pretending to hustle so as to create the illusion of success.
Meanwhile, where I grew up, deep in the heart of flyover country, everyone returns their deposit bottles. No one leaves their door open with the air conditioning on. People do their own laundry. People cook. And they may not have the hippest sideburns or the thinnest cell phones, but they somehow manage to save energy in ways that New Yorkers can't even imagine. For a bunch of hicks, that's pretty progressive.

Posted by Dennis DeSantis @ 12:17 AM EST

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