The technologically trashy life.....

(I'd have gotten out of the car to snap photos but since they had lots of signs expressly forbidding people from leaving their vehicles I had to snap photos through our dusty windshield at the recycling place. I wonder if it's like one of those wild safari parks and a lion would have ate us if we got out?)

Today was an exceptional day. I swear I floated around on a cloud of smug satisfaction and pure superiority all day. Where ever I walked, people cast startled glances my way like lines from a fishing rod, trying to catch just what this air of mysteriousness that hung about me was.
Was it the bounce in my step?
Did gravity not cling to me with quite as desperate a grasp as it did to every one else?
Perhaps.
I know that I felt lighter, in fact it is quite possible that I floated on my way into the grocery store. Not only did we empty the garage of a car load of techno trash and recycle it responsibly today, but I emptied my brain of the responsibility and associated guilt of said accumulated pile of techno trash. The kind of stuff that multiplies shockingly fast in this *digital* and technologically advanced age we live in. And in our case, having my husband in a computer related web site building biz, monitors and keyboards, fax machines and multiple printers have a way of stacking up.
I am not the first person to suggest strange and un-seemly procreative things happening in the dark corners of our abodes where the junk stuff lives. Perhaps it's a natural combination of time and dust, coupling with the trash in the early hours of the morning when eyes are not on them, spawning new bits of wire and cables and cords and phones and hard drives and disturbing numbers of computer power supplies. The sort of things you can't point your finger at and say "A HA! You did NOT exist yesterday!!!!" Because with out a doubt you'll only get that eye brow raised, quick step back and hasty goodbyes, reaction from any witnesses. Though deep in their hearts, in the very back corner, in the crevices that resist logical thought they know.....they know what happens with junk in the dark because it happens in their garages too. But they turn a blind eye when the garage door opens and pretend it's a bit of dust that has caused their startled gasp and not the newborn piles of computer mice that lay still and silent in the light of day.
There are only so many ways to attractively stack and store 3 old computer monitors, 3 old computers and the various and out dated non-working parts to accompany each bit. Eventually it gets to the point where if you have to look at any bit of it any longer you're going to do something drastic like banish it from your life forever, or scream.
Banishing is fun, easier on the throat, highly effective and very satisfying. But I like to do my banishing legally and responsibly so I researched where to take techno trash so it could be recycled and like a shining, golden beam of light guiding me I found just the place.

(The place where we took our techno trash has free drop off the first Saturday of every month. I love free! Also look at the incredibly strange cubes of mashed together parts. It's weird but oddly beautiful because all of that is being recycled or reused in some way instead of just being buried!!)

The place we took our stuff is called E World Recyclers and they claim to recycle 100% of what can be salvaged from techno trash. They say....."Nothing Goes in a Landfill but the organics and other materials such as wood that belong there. E-World Recyclers is driving the entire industry toward a cleaner process, being the first recycler in the country able to create furnace-ready glass from CRT tubes."

Alan has commented several times about the strange times we live in. How something that still works, was once fairly expensive, like a monitor, is now so worthless you can't even donate them to a goodwill. In fact in some places you have to pay for them to take your techno trash to be disposed of properly. These things don't *age* well. Bell bottoms come back in style but old style clunky chunky monitors? I doubt it.
At this point I should say I can feel that feeling that means that at some point in the year 3421 that some person has probably dug this blog post out of the massive blog post graveyard and will chuckle at my old fashioned ways and be aghast at the notion of wanting and needing a skinny high resolution monitor when giant old style ones are all the rage and are being dug up like fossils from our old dumps and being polished and sold as antiques for a quadrillion Teractoles. (Teractoles being the planatoid currency in the year 3421)
Delivery of our car load of non-working non-usable technology trash was easy. What wasn't easy was having the dedication and resolve to set the alarm clock so we'd get up in the morning at the appointed time to deliver the car load of stuff. We hate wake up alarms like people hate calories. With a deep and abiding hate and a healthy dose of respect for their awesome power and potential.
But we did it. That and more, I finally mailed off my box of # 5 plastics I had gathered up. If you thought there were a lot of sour cream containers in that pile before.....good golly. Plus I used the time in the last couple weeks to dig out every # 5 plastic anything I could suss out and 9.50 later it's on it's way, outta my hands and off to be put to use instead of buried in a landfill.
Like I said, today was an exceptional day.
To top off my waste management and trash related day I saw something VERY interesting.

(forgive the blurry picture but when you're spying you snap photos on the move, because a moving spy is a spy that's less likely to get it's ass kicked)

Three blue bins at a local business. THREE. Even I in all my obsessive recycling insane ways can hardly fill 2/3 of our blue bin on a good day and yet they had three......
I think it may be my first big break in my blue bin thefting case. Perhaps I shall lurk closer one of these nights and with a few deft rolls and acrobatic jumps to avoid the security cameras I shall inspect the bins closer to see if any look like mine.
I see this as going one of two ways. One, they are mine and I shall exact my revenge and meter out justice Canadian style (meaning ice will be involved) or Two, I shall find out this business is really really really good at recycling and I shall bow down before them and study at their feet to learn the ways of a zero waste lifestyle.
I'll be fine with either way.
For now, I shall go down to the garage and dance in the spots where old monitors used to sit.