Prima Donna Trash Collectors

Have you ever noticed how everyone acts like they are prima donnas or divas these days even if they can't dance or sing?


In our neck of the woods we have prima donna trash collectors.  They have designer lists of what they will or will not pick up.  All trash must be in plastic bags that are not set out at the curb before a regulation time.  All trash cans must have lids (they frequently don't).  Sticks and branches can't be longer than a particular size and must be tied together in bundles.  God forbid you should be caught with only one regulation length stick.  If you don't have something to tie it to, it will just sit there until h e double hockey sticks freezes over.  Or, you could disguise it with a plastic bag.


Appliances will not be picked up.  They may not stand outside while you figure out what to do with them.  And, if the neighborhood used furniture store doesn't pick them up at the appointed time, you can be subjected to a fine up to a thousand dollars.


Now, when recycling went into effect, the results were mind boggling.  We will take plastic, but not glass.  Don't put Styrofoam in your bin.  But isn't that a plastic?  Some will take newspapers, but none of the colored pages.  Some will take magazines but others say hold the slicks.


Metal scrapping is so lucrative that police recently arrested a shirtless man trying to steal copper from the top of a school.  But woe to us if we put metal in our recycling bin.


We are considered environmental gremlins if we include chemicals, paints or batteries in our sacks.  We are expected to pay $15.50 per month for trash pickup and still drive out to the hinterlands to get rid of this trash.  And now the EPA wants 19 1/2 % more to save our planet.


There's no doubt that there is much we can do to preserve the landfills of our world.  And I don't quarrel with the thought that some of us don't do enough.  But haven't we gotten a little carried away?


Are your sure, for instance, that our sins of environmental pollution are what is causing the artic meltdown?  If you are, then how do you explain the meltdown of the glaciers?  Were there millions to billions of people driving cars, dumping batteries, spewing smoke and leaking runoff then?


It's trash for Pete's sake.  Pick it up already, that's what we are paying you to do.  And you should sort the stuff yourselves.  Your companies are the ones who are going to earn the bucks when you sell it at the other end.