"Advice for Greenies in a Complicated World"

Dear JJ:

They say the recyclables you put in the blue bin should be clean, but honestly, just how clean does that pizza box or Aveda shampoo bottle really have to be?

Amanda
Silver Lake, Los Angeles

Dear Amanda:

Now that's a great question!

I bet you know which glass, paper, and plastics your recycling agency accepts. Yeah, but how much cheese on the pizza box is too much cheese? How about the shampoo caps? Can I leave the stamps on? Do I have to flatten the boxes? And really, no broken glass?

These "yeah, but" confusions are the ones that most often freeze Greenies between the blue bin and the trash can. And confusion, of course, is one of the two major causes of recycling mistakes--the second being fear.

Specifically, widespread Greenie fear of the trash can. Our anxiety about the height of landfills typically combines with our intense desire to be virtuous people. Add the abject guilt that Greenies consequently feel when we discard waste that we're responsible for. And it all induces a paralyzing degree of terror--which can often hog as much space in the recycling trucks as unflattened boxes.

In fact, it's in the space between confusion and fear--between being unsure whether something is recyclable and being just deeply apprehensive about throwing it out--that most blue-bin crimes happen.

To clear up the confusion, I asked Neil Guglielmo these "yeah, but" questions. As head of L.A.'s Solid Resources Citywide Recycling Division, Neil might be one of 27 people in America who actually knows how much cheese is too much. Paper and cardboard, he assures me, have to be clean. How clean? "If it had a sandwich on it and you knock off the crumbs, that's OK. If it had stuck-on lasagna, it can't be recovered" and gets a lift to the landfill. We can extrapolate to the pizza box.

The trouble with that shampoo bottle is that the oozing liquids contaminate the paper. Or in Neil's official words: "It all goes into a big truck, and that smushes this nasty stuff with everything else." He recommends that you rinse out the bottles and then put the caps back on.

So yes to shampoo caps! And honestly, yes, Amanda, the Aveda bottle will still be recycled if you leave an inch of rosemary-mint shampoo in the bottom--if you want the City of L.A. to use your taxes and mine to wash your dishes.

Stamps and sticker paper are kosher for blue bins. Broken glass cuts up the seals on the trucks, and also shatters into pieces that can be impossible to sort. No, you don't have to flatten the boxes, but that cardboard does in fact take up a lot of space in the trucks.

Thank you, Neil! And now, that brings us back to fear. What to do? Well, I recommend a four-step process for Greenies in the grip of the common trash-can panic attack.

Let's say, for example, that you are faced with discarding an item such as a cheesy oily Trader Joe's pizza box. You have willingly bought and used the box (in my opinion, this is not necessarily a capital offense, but it's up to you). It is not blue-bin-approved, and you are certain it cannot be reused or recycled elsewhere.

First: do not run. Do not turn your back on the trash can. Second: maintain eye contact with the can, and speak firmly as follows in a low voice. "If I toss this into the bin, the nice people at the transfer station will not grant this box asylum. It will just follow the scenic route to the landfill, which will require a lot of extra fuel and labor and will take a lot of innocent paper with it."

Third: take courage. And fourth: throw the item away.

The things we toss into our blue bins can be drenched not only with tomato sauce and organic coconut hair conditioner but also with our anxieties and desires and our most fervent hopes. Our very sense of who we are, even. Which is why it's always helpful to remember that the purpose of recycling is not to ensure that we're good people. At least not primarily. It's to recycle.

An earlier version of this piece appeared on GOOD.

Green Me Up, JJ is an occasional advice column. You can e-mail JJ with your burning questions about how to act and think environmentally smart in our complicated 21st-century world.

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