I don't think I would have had a good time at your party.

I would have had a blast, so invite me instead of Jay. :-) Seriously, this was as funny a post as I have read in a while, and so true. I have to re-educate my mother in law every time she visits. They say "people are different here," and this story proves, again, that that's not really a bad thing.

There's something about the story that I find just a little bit fishy. California has a law, passed years ago, that mandates reductions in landfill use and encourages waste handlers to provide for recycling.

From what I remember of California in the late 90's, that law made service for even the smallest trash can pretty expensive. The caveat though was that you could recycle as much as you wanted. Although my experiences were focused around the bay area (from Santa Cruz to Sonoma), I still have a vague notion that they recycle in L.A.

Maybe the problem is that with all the different recycling efforts going on, supply of recycled goods is up, while demand is fairly static. That might mean that paying the fines is more cost effective than recycling at a loss.

Let me guess, Chad just graduated from college where they didn't have recycling.

I liked the writing, too.

As a native Californian I would just point out - plenty of Oregonians could be just as blind to recycling ethics as Chad. Maybe they wouldn't hail from Portland (though they might, don't be too smug folks), but then no one said where Chad was from, either. California's a big state. Even bigger than Oregon...

Me, I cut my green ethic's teeth in California. Also my water-conserving knee-jerk reaction to over-flushing... We may need to ask for some lessons on that up here in O-re-gone, come this summer...

"California has a law, passed years ago, that mandates reductions in landfill use and encourages waste handlers to provide for recycling."

Nope, it's true, recycling gets overlooked in California.

I helped my brother move out of his apartment last fall and was shocked at the stuff we had to throw out. His apartment complex had tried recycling bins five years ago, but gave up because people kept dumping garbage in them. There wasn't a waste transfer station around that would take recycling, either. And Goodwill looked at me like I was crazy for offering them a fully functional leather recliner with some wear on the arms -- they couldn't possibly sell something so ratty!

And this wasn't L.A. or Bakersfield or Fresno; it was in the heart of the Bay Area, just outside of Berkeley. Apparently the financial incentives aren't enough if the cultural attitude isn't there.

Shame on all of you. You'd rather make someone feel small than allow a few cans and bottles to go unrecycled. In the big picture, I think the cans and bottles from your party don't matter one whit, but what about your new friend? Couldn't you have let it go at the time and filled him in privately later, or better yet, allowed him to see for himself how it's done here and given him a chance to retain his dignity? He was doing what he thought was a magnanimous act - cleaning up after the rest of you - and instead of being grateful you had to put him down. I guess for his sake he's lucky he found out your true colors before getting involved with one of your snooty girlfriends.

Come on guys. I love Portland as much as the next person, but really...

In Oregon we do little pilot programs here in Portland on co-mingled curbside residential recyling. In California it is the practice, and has been for years, in most major metropolitan areas.

In Oregon we have no statewide e-cycling setup. California is the national leader in this field.

This year is the first in over 20 years of working in this city where I've worked in a building with recyling for everything, not just paper.

Look in the garbage cans on any city street corner - bottles, plastic, paper, trash.

Please don't tell me you really believe there is no place to take recyling in the SF Bay area.

Here in Portland Goodwill recently turned down our donation of some quite nice bedroom furniture. We set it by our garage to try and find a place to take the next day, and it was gone in the morning...

Apartment buildings are typically the least complient with recyling goals, yes, even here in Portland...

"Everybody" does not recycle in Portland. We grow our own Chads right here at home. I know this for a fact, and not just because our recycling statistics are not at 100%... Sometimes recycling-virgins come to visit at our house, often they are friends of our youngest son, and, Becky has a point - we try, with courtesy, to show them where to put stuff.

I agree we are more "recyling-conscious" here in Portland than in many many places. But, again, come on. Complacency is a bitch. It's nice to know we're ahead of DC, and probably all of Florida and most of the South (just guessing, of course) but smuggness and complacency lead to stagnation. Folks on this forum should be out in front, pushing for state-wide e-cycling legislation.

After all, we don't want folks in California to be telling tales about their visit to Oregon and how, can you believe it, it's so backward there there is nowhere to throw your dead laptop but in the landfill...

Kari, I know all about Free Geek. They are here in Portland and we always use them when we do neighborhood cleanups.

What do folks do who live in Coos Bay? How about Eastern Oregon?

We need statewide solutions for this one or access to these opportunities will remain very lopsided and statewide most Oregon e-waste will continue to go into the landfills.

I agree that "Portlanders" recycle at a higher rate than "Californians". But folks in the California city I come from recycle just as much as folks here do. And more, no doubt, than folks in many other areas of Oregon.

Anyway, my point is not that we are not admirable, but rather that we've gotten a little too smug about it.

As for the 5 cents, I'd rather see pressure put on retailers to not limit the refunds they'll accept at a time. My kids like to take bottles back when they can get a real return, only to be told they've brought too much back, and the store doesn't allow people to bring in that much at a time. (Our local Safeway caps it at $7.00) An attempt to keep "street people" from using their facilities. What a laugh, every time we go the majority of people there are "street people."...

As a fairly recent CA transplant, I thought that it was strange that the recycling people here are so picky. I recently got a pretty hateful "last warning" for not separating glass from aluminum. I never knew that they two were supposed to be separate. And I thought I was a great recycler.

Here's a link to a study by OSD on the our own home-grown Portland "Chads", where they tend to live, and how to work to encourage greater participation by these folks in our recyling system.

No one will be surprised to learn how much education re recyling has to do with participation in the program.

http://www.sustainableportland.org/sw_pub_participation_curbside_5-02.pdf

Anne: "Please don't tell me you really believe there is no place to take recyling in the SF Bay area."

Well, no, I couldn't believe it, either. I called every city and county agency listed under "Recycling" in three different Yellow Pages. For a basic mixed-paper drop, the sort we make at curbside here, we had to drive 30 miles, arrive between 10 and 4:30 (and we actually saw them closing at 4:15), and pay because their advertising turned out to be a lie -- they weren't recycling; they were just a landfill intake.

I know there are Californians who do a good job of recycling. They have my infinite admiration.

Oh, and the other thing California does that's smart is include fruit juice (the V-8 people somehow managed to get vegie juice excluded) and tea and water containers in their deposit program.

And for you people who think redeeming them is too much work and you should just be allowed to put them in your curbside bin? Um... you are, in fact, allowed to just put them in the bin. You could separate them out so that somebody who wants to cash them in can do so easily and bless your house, but you don't have to.

I've never thought the recycling ritual was particularly onerous. My young son and I generally take the returnables back to the local grocery store after they have overtaken a corner of the garage. Last time, we had just about finished shoving all of the items into the various collection machines and had gotten our scrip to cash in when a guy in his mid-30s came in looking worn and tired. He was a little too clean to be one of the homeless recycling regulars that frequent the place. He had several large bags of cans, and pretty soon a young girl 12 or so, came in with another bag. We struck up a conversation about what a pain it is to have to return certain items back to the store where they were purchased originally, and how stupid it is that there's a deposit on beer and pop, but not on juice/snapple/gatorade/etc. Turns out the guy's friends and neighbors were all contributing their recyclables to help his family pay for costs he and his wife were having to pay out of pocket for his youngest daughter's cancer treatments. Needless to say, the few dollars my son and I had gleaned from the machines seemed like a small contribution indeed.

Actually, what has made me aggressively recycle is the amount of money I pay each week for my trash can. If I overflow, I pay more.

Financial incentives work wonders.

(As to the comment about glass and alumninum, this is a known dilemma in recycling. Fact is, glass recycling is actually not energy efficient. And broken glass screws up the "intermingled" blend (paper, metal, plastic) that constitutes more recycling streams. Finally, glass is a pretty good addition to the solid waste stream precisely because it does not break down. So why do we continue to recycle glass? It's all psychological--glass was the first thing we all learned to recycle, and advocates fear pulling it out of the recycling stream because people will begin to doubt the benefits of recycling generally. The NUMBER ONE item to recycle by the way: paper!!)

I remember the "mini-scandal" Leslie is referring to. I think it was about 5 or 6 years ago. I don't remember which hauler it was, but they'd been doing it for awhile. It was pretty blatant, but not too surprising.

Re the folks who were donating their cans to a family in medical crises -- I had a friend in a similar situation -- so if you're thinking that sounds like a good idea, think again. There are two things families in that situation are most short of: money, and time.

If you really want to help, set up a schedule of who on the block will bring dinner to them on what day. Take the other kids (if there are siblings) somewhere extra special, because they are bound to be feeling sad, scared, resentful of lost parental attention, and guilty about the resentment.

Pass the hat, everyone pitch in $10.00 and then someone go do a big grocery shopping, and drop the stuff off at their house.

Set up a bank account to take donations towards medical expenses.

Don't give them your cans to recycle for you. (Of course they'll take them, and be grateful, and add that one more thing to their to-do list, and blame themselves for being even more tired and overstretched and cranky and all the rest of it...) If you really want to do something for them around cans, take the cans in yourself. You don't have a sick child to take to chemo.

When I've visited relatives in LA, they had one giant recycling bin in which everything recyclable is commingled (and yes they did use it!). Same in S.F. So I imagine Chad was a bit of an anomaly just as there are folks here in Portland who don't recycle, either.

As for bottle returns, I long ago traded the sticky, stinky, annoying bottle return machine ordeal for simply taking the bottles to a store that has a designated bin for donating your returnables (Wild Oats and New Seasons and Lamb's Thriftway all have bins designated for local schools.) All you have to do is drop the bags of bottles/cans into the bin and walk away happily, knowing that a few bucks is oing to a good cause. It's well worth it--a huge stress reducer.