Trash Talk

I am not an active environmentalist. I don't picket or rally. I don't float in the middle of the ocean protesting against whale slaughtering. I sit in the comfort of my own home and obtusely watch people who are braver than me get credited for acts of environmental initiative on the evening news.

But I do what I can to protect the dolphins and the birds and the lady beetles. I have short showers. I decline the option of plastic shopping bags when possible and I put my rubbish in the bin.

So imagine my surprise, while walking down Forveaux St this morning having just finished off a coffee from Bourke St Bakery, that I got reprimanded for putting my take-away cup in a resident's council wheelie bin.

Granted, I could have held on to the cup for another five minutes before I got up to my own apartment complex, but the bin was on the side of the street so I popped it in and kept walking.

Unbeknown to me, the home owner was standing with some friends right infront of it and didn't smile upon my own small act of environmental initiative. Instead, he yelled out after me, "Um, this isn't a council bin!"
Except that it was. Because it had a red lid. And while residing on someone's stoop is still the property of the council, not the home owner.

The company I was with turned around and politely yelled back, "Um, why don't you chill out?" while I continued walking, slightly bemused as to how I'd received a slap across the wrist for initiating a good deed.

It's not like I'd walked into his house and helped myself to his kitchen trash can. It was on the stoop of his terrace, seperated from the street by a waist-high iron fence. It was a matter of flipping open the red lid and putting the cup inside. Granted, people probably put their trash in his bin all the time. It probably bothers him no end. Everytime he goes to put his trash out, his bins are overflowing with Bourke St Bakery takeaway cups and he waves a fist at God, crying "Why?! Why, God?! Why!?"

But what if he hadn't caught me red-handed? Would he have even noticed my small addition to his weekly waste? My coffee cup would just be another piece of trash in a bin that's contents are going to the same place as my own rubbish bin. No matter who's bin the cup ended up in, mine or his, it was still destined for the same landfill. So does it really matter? Isn't the point that it was put in a bin in the first place?

If I wanted to be a dolphin-killing, lady-beetle blitzing, luting, polluting anti-environmentalist I would have dropped the cardboard cup on the side of the street and never thought of it again. But I grew up watching Captain Planet. I took the vow of the Planeteer long ago and therefore, put my rubbish in the bin just like Kwame, Wheeler, Linka, Gi and Ma-Ti told me too. Otherwise Captain Planet will disown me and Gaia will smite me with lightening.

Apparently, the power isn't yours. The power belongs to the analy-retentive resident on Forveaux St who dishes out a side of guilt with his trashbags and leftover takeaway containers.

Maybe this guy is Looten Plunder in disguise? Better get my Planeteer ring out of retirement...

KH.