Recyclers Wanted: English-speakers Need Not Apply

by John W. Lillpop


As one who consumes copious quantities of bottled water and canned soft drinks, I recently fell for some of the leftist pap about the inherent moral and spiritual superiority of those who recycle.

Mind you, people here in the San Francisco Bay Area take recycling very seriously.

In fact, next to assuring full rights for gays, transgenders, illegal aliens, and Islamofascists, being Green is the number one priority for any Bay Area resident worth his or her weight in "Bush Lied, People Died!" bumper stickers.

Here, correct punctuation requires one to capitalize green, as in Green, while letting God fend for himself, as in god.

Being Green is no longer optional, nor is it merely a commendable thing to do for those obsessed with doing community spirit.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Green is a full-scale religion and vital condition for survival.

Example: State and local police, highway patrol officers, sheriffs and other law enforcement authorities are forbidden from even asking about the immigration status of a carload of intoxicated Hispanics with Tijuana license plates and Viva!Mexico tattooed on their foreheads.

But do not let a state or local police officer, highway patrol officer, sheriff, or other law enforcement authority catch you tossing an empty Pepsi can into the garbage!

That is a serious offense that can lead to severe penalties and prosecution.

Bay Area residents are even required to segregate regular garbage from recyclable materials. Dumping an empty plastic bottle into the wrong type of trash bin is not yet a felony, but the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are working on it.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has said that he would sign such a law, provided the law includes rebates for empty whiskey bottles, and used administrative assistants.

Da Mayor is learning that rehabilitation--San Francisco style-- can be dangerous to one's health!

After years of sorting through my garbage in order to do what the city of San Jose pays Sanitation Engineers (garbage men!) $40 an hour plus benefits to do, I decided to recycle my empty cans and bottles on my own.

Recycling as a way of life seemed fairly straight forward, even simple: It was just a matter of hauling empty cans and bottles to a designated recycle center, and collecting the small pittance offered to those not fortunate enough to be paid $75,000 a year by the city for hauling garbage.

The project seemed even easier than imagined when I found out that there were two recycle centers very near my home.

As it turns out, the closest recycle center is also a Vietnamese grocery store. But not to worry, because much of the signage in the shopping center is in English.

Once inside, I quickly realized that asking for help in English had about the same likelihood for success as selling Holocaust artifacts in downtown Tehran! Forget it!

So it was off to the next recycle center, and yet another Asian food store. Another store packed with people who found the word "Recycle" confusing, profane, and or hysterically funny.

By the grace of God, I was finally directed to the recycle area in the lot behind the food store.

Thinking that my nightmare was finally over, I started to feel slightly better about recycling. Perhaps it wasn't all bad after all.

My positive mood quickly went negative at the recycle station. There, the Hispanic attendant had his radio tuned to a Spanish music station with the volume so loud that one was tempted to call the EPA to report a violation of air pollution standards.

Despite blaring Mexican music and an English-challenged recycle clerk, I was able to redeem my cans and bottles and do my small part to save the planet.

Still, the experience was so repulsive and un-American, I decided to get even in my small, spiteful way: I donated the recycle rebate money to Exxon with a handwritten note reading "Compliments of Al Gore."

In English!

John Lillpop is a recovering liberal.