(no subject)

On my friends-list is someone who left a Yahoo Group over a discussion about whether people taking cans from recycling bins is stealing.

I figured it would be really rude to discuss it in their journal since they clearly did not want to. However...

I've had this discussion with people before. Municipalities use the money they get from recycling aluminum and glass to help pay for recycling services. When people take aluminum cans from the bins they are taking money that would otherwise go to the city. (Cities get little or nothing from paper.) It is stealing -- albeit not from me, but from the city. Since I have an interest in the city continuing its recycling program, and in its not raising rates to do so, I am perfectly willing to yell at people to get the hell out of my bins.

Note: I am talking about curbside recycling bins that the city is required to pick up. I have no issue with people lifting cans out of sidewalk trash cans in front of stores, since those are handled by the merchants and not the city, and since as far as I can tell most merchants do not sift their trash for recyclables. Cans and bottles taken out of trash cans are removed from the waste stream heading for the landfill -- a good thing.

That said, I do exercise a fair amount of discretion in whom I yell at: the twenty-year old woman in nice jeans and shirt who was looting my bins and putting the cans in her car trunk? Her I'll talk to, and inform her that she is stealing, and generally put the fear of God into her so she leaves (I haven't seen her since).

The homeless guy on the bicycle? Not at all. I'll even smile at him. Maybe even say good morning.

There is stealing, and then there is survival.

The Impossible Dream (The Quest):Brian Stokes Mitchell:Man of La Mancha