It aint easy being green.

Ok. How many times do I have to put our recycling curbside, only for it to be forgotten (or completely ignored) by Santa Fe's Waste Management?!?! Since moving a few houses down (and to the left, dammit!) the city of Santa Fe refuses my refuse. Any why, oh why? For a small family of three we produce a fairly small amount of garbage. Maybe a bag a week. Sometimes two bags. And not those big black hefty duty bags. We're talking "tall kitchen" bags of the recycled sort. Ok, enough about my garbage bags. Let's talk recycling. We're big on it here. Roughly 80% of what we get rid of is recyclables. Glass. Paper. Plastic. The usual suspects. If we're not attempting to turn salsa jars into 'charming' drinkin' glasses, then we're sending it to its next incarnation. So, sort and curb it. Well, week after week our efforts go unnoticed. Finally, it got to the point where we have SO much to recycle we had to take it into our own hands. We take our glass. paper. plastic. on a short road trip to the seemingly 'public' recycling bins at Whole Foods Market. As Keenan starts relocating our glass. paper. plastic. from trunk to bin, the enormous bald bearded scary gun toting security guard walks outside just in time to tell us, "No way, Jose! These thar bins aint for the public to be usin'. Whole Foods gets fined for mis-sorted recycling." Crap. Great. Let's bring the unwanteds back to the house to sit. Talking to our neighbor tonight, we find out that he's been trying to recycle for FOUR years, to no avail. How did moving a few houses down (and to the left) completely change the recycling rules??? Scratching my head, wondering where to send the orphans, all I can say is "this is SO Santa Fe." Since I refuse to send this stuff to a landfill, I will foster the glass. paper. plastic. until a reasonable home is found. Jeez.