My poor brother who is a superintendent of a five story residential building in Manhattan, works his butt off to reduce our carbon footprint! Here in NYC we don't recycle necessarily out of the goodness of our hears, but for fear of getting another high cost fine from the Dept. of Sanitation. Out in front of his building there are four major sized garbage bins, two for garbage, one for plastic and glass, one for paper, newspapers and pizza boxes. The tenants in the building seem to eat enough pizza to fill up a bin within hours, so the super has had to assign a second bin just for boxes. All the bins are clearly marked, and above the bins a sign indicates what to put where. There's even a large sign in the building hallway visible as you come down the stairs to empty your garbage. I often wonder what the literacy rate in his building is as I watch my brother take out the bottles from the bin marked boxes, and take out the boxes from the bin marked plastics. Why does he work so darn hard? Why does it matter what is put where? Because the Dept. fo Sanitation evilly waits behind darkened windowed vehicles to jump out and hand the super a $200 fine if something is not in the right recycle bin!
One day I saw a guy going through the bins. It's commonplace, they're usually collecting bottles to bring to the recycle station and make a few bucks, but this fellow wasn't collecting bottles. I thought he might be one of the local derelicts looking for food, so I asked him, "Are you hungry?" Annoyed, he quickly turned to me and said, "NO! I'm from the Dept. of Sanitation, checking your recycle bins." This building can proudly say they've made their contribution to the coffers of the city and have received only a mere three fines this year. So I've suggested to my brother, that, for the tenants of his building, he conduct monthly seminars or guided tours of the garbage and recycle bins, and call it, "Reduce our carbon footprint, or you'll get a carbon foot up your..."!
