Hillsboro Recycling center rocks! And Keep America Beautiful is maybe not so awesome after all

Back when I was working at a little community newspaper down in Williamson County, I was also living in The Gardens at Hillsboro Village. Both were themselves follies of post-graduate youth... but reading No Impact Man today made me think of another folly of that time - my resistance to recycling.

My time at the newspaper as a writer, listings/calendar editor and web editor coincided with the time I lived with my first after-college roommate - a guy who had the attitude that recycling was the status-quo and not recycling was, frankly, odd. I, on the other hand, could have cared less. The apartment complex had a dumpster, and after walking down three flights of stairs to empty any trash we had, I was unwilling to go further. But he was insistent, so we had a bin in our kitchen to collect recyclables, and our ignorance of the area had us driving 15-20 minutes to what we thought was the nearest recycling facility (Charlotte Center by the Strike-n-Spare) . This drive did not help my it's-way-too-much-effort attitude about the whole thing. When that roommate and I parted ways, so did I and the recycling bin.

Still, I continued to moderate calendar listings at the paper, which happened to be chock-full of community/government-sponsored events. The city and county governments were really good about sending in event listings and such - we never had to track them down. So there was a steady stream of these events, as well as a large quantity, and at one point there was a glut of events run by Keep Williamson Beautiful. Maybe it was around Earth Day or something. Anyway, there were opportunities for free shredding, free disposal of paint/gas/oil, and common-area clean-ups. The sheer amount of the events, I suppose, is what stuck in my mind, and I was left with the rather passive impression that Keep America Beautiful - the KWB parent organization, was a good thing. I didn't think too much about it - it seemed like the KWB events were good things, even if they bored me... I wasn't really into the whole community-togetherness thing anyway.

And I said all of this to address two things that occurred to me today.

First, I was surprised when I read this post on No Impact Man this morning. Basically, it talks about how
"...bottling and canning corporations promoted individual environmental action back in the 70s as a way to shirk their corporate responsibilities. Beverage industry interests told us all to clean up our own garbage through a front organization, Keep America Beautiful (KAB), so they wouldn’t have to."

You know, it's this sort of stuff that feeds my cynicism and sadness about capitalism and, well, people in general. I want to beat my fists against a wall in frustration over the failure of people to just try to Do Good! Why can't they simply try to respect themselves, their fellow man and their environment? Why don't they believe, at least a little, in karma? ::sigh:: I always end this train of thought by coming to the conclusion that all I can do be responsible for my own actions and choices - All I can do is all I can do.

Yesterday, I took the recycling over to the Hillsboro Recycling Center in Green Hills (check this site out for info on where you can drop off recycling). It's back behind Hillsboro High School on Hillmont Dr. (off Glen Echo), and there are not only recycling dumpsters, but there's a Goodwill collection truck there. I will admit, part of why I have started recycling is because of this center. It's super convenient! However, the other reason is because of my relatively recent preoccupation with being a little bit green... and one of the things that encourages me to at least try is Colin's blog. The point here is that the Hillsboro Recycling Center is AWESOME! Going there actually renews my commitment to recycle what I can. It's so nice that, in a community where I don't get the feeling there's much environmental awareness, there's this wonderful recycling center.