This morning I heard the rustling of cans and bottles near our driveway. I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Since we have a city-run curbside recycling program in our neighborhood, people sometimes go house-to-house and take the cans from the bins.
I told the people to get out of our trash and go away.
Now, part of me thinks, “Hey what does it matter? As long as the cans get recycled.”
But the other part of me knows that what they are doing is theft. And in this case, the end does not justify the means.
The city is running a money-losing recycling program. Despite the fact that it is not the financially wise thing to do, the city still does it because it is the RIGHT thing to do. I want to support that program and that morals-over-profits way of operating. I want all neighborhoods to have curbside recycling. Allowing people to sabotage it is wrong.
If these people want to root through people’s trash that are NOT recycling, then I’m okay with that. Or if they want to go through our regular trash bins and see if we forgot to recycle something, I would be fine with that, too (As long as they don’t make a mess.) But to simply drive through neighborhoods that are already recycling and filling your truck with the collected cans? It’s counterproductive and it ain’t right.