Recycling

I'm a great believer in recycling. When I was a kid, our family was the first in our neighborhood to recycle. Over the weeks, my mother would save up all our empty cans -- and given that we were a family of five with over ten cats we generally had a fair number of these about. She would wash and save every glass jar or bottle and carefully pile up old newspapers and magazines and, when we finally had enough to fill the back of the car, cart it all off to the University of California's newly established recycling center. We were their very first customers.

It was a time consuming business. Cans had to be cleaned and crushed flat, which meant that both ends had to be opened. Newspapers and magazines had to be in precise bundles, too. We kids resented having to do this, but my mother appealed to our sense of ecological accountability.

Decades later, when my husband and I lived in Japan, recycling was mandatory. There simply isn't enough spare land in the Tokyo area to accommodate the unrecycled trash of over twelve million people. Glass, cans, paper, cardboard, even plastic -- all of these things and more are recycled in most major Japanese cities, and the rules for what goes where are strict.

On recycling pick-up day, the trash areas are patrolled by a group of ladies you don't want to tangle with. These are generally veteran housewives rougly over the age of fifty, and if you play fast and free with the recycling regulations and try to get away with mixed glass and aluminum, say, you are just making their day. My husband mixed newspaper and cardboard once and got a good telling off for his negligence.

With my own recycling background, I rarely fell foul of these ladies, but I had my own recycling woes. Because I spoke Japanese and not all of the foreigners in our neighborhood did, I was frequently asked to remind them about the importance of following the rules. I am a wimp; I have absolutely no leadership skills or air of authority about me, and I dreaded having to do this. Our foreign neighbors were, variously, an American bachelor with a worryingly active and noisy social life, an Irish couple, and a group of young Australians who all seemed to be over two meters in height. I approached all of them and in my namby-pamby way, managed to tell them about the neighborhood recycling committee's rules. The general response to this was 'No way am I going to all that trouble just for a handful of old bats who have far too much time on their hands.'

In the interest of international harmony, I told the neighborhood trash ladies that the other foreigner residents felt that they were too busy at work to spend much time organizing their trash. I sensed the ladies' indignation, but imagined how much worse it would have been if the other foreign residents could speak Japanese -- or if I'd translated their words verbatim.

When we finally left Japan, I breathed a sigh of relief that I would never again be asked to serve as a go-between in trash disputes. My husband pointed out that in the U.K., recycling was not mandatory. We could toss our bottles and cans into the garbage and never feel a moment's compunction.

But the habit is too well ingrained. Here in Scotland, too, I recycle everything: compost, paper, tins, bottles, plastic, clothes, shoes, toys -- you name it. I even recycle jokes.

Easter holidays began on April the first, and my two kids strongly felt they ought to be allowed to lie in bed until noon. At 9:00 A.M., I knocked on each child's door and bellowed out "It's your turn to clean the cat sick off the stairs! The cat's eaten a mouse and its guts are everywhere! Get down here right now and do it!" Quite naturally, they whined and pulled their blankets over their ears. I give my eldest credit, though. She finally stumbled out of bed, muttering, "Okay, okay -- I'll do it."

April fools! My mother used to get me with that one every time. And that's the third time my kids have fallen for it.