There's myself. My five truths.
There's myself and my partner, my wife.
There's my family. My wife and four kids, and my sisters and brothers and parents, and my wife's family.
There's extended family.
There's our local society.
There's "society" writ large.
There's a society which includes history and pro-history -- the generations yet to be born, who will live in the world we leave upon them.
There is the life of all life. Current, past and future animals and plants. The environment is a spirit that transcends us.
There is the concept of life in eternity and across the universe.
Concentric circles. I tried to explain this to a Boston University professor who was held in high regard. Either I didn't explain it well, or he assessed me too quickly. Because decades later, I'm still defining this as important, and not just important to me, but Important After Me.
When I leave the recycling field, I'll try to be an Obi Wan Kenobi blue Force Ghost.
Incremental improvements in recycling—and other environmental work—tend to be over-hyped and then over-punished. That cycle produces a kind of greenwashing hangover, where gotcha journalism looks for reasons to punch down on recyclers for having been “too proud.” That’s not an accident; it’s how social anxiety expresses itself.
What actually matters is refereeing false claims of fraud and “hoax.”
For example: the claim that a 250-kg bale of HDPE plastic sold at a U.S. dock for $240—shipping paid by the Malaysian buyer—was somehow dumped into a river in “neighboring” Indonesia. This story has been recycled endlessly (NPR, BBC, Guardian), usually without evidence, because suspicion has replaced proof.
The plastic was recycled. It was not dumped. Recycling is not a hoax.
The deeper problem is this: society is so alarmed by rapid environmental degradation—on a geological timescale—that it both celebrates any improvement and then resents that the improvement didn’t solve everything.
The same act is first praised and then punished for not being salvation.
What we don’t need are parasitic NGOs or journalists whose business model depends on making "the perfect the enemy of the good". My 30-employee electronics recycling company won’t save the world, and it won’t be remembered 500 years from now. But the tons of natural resources saved will actually still be circulating in that new economy.
I’d rather our staff earn our weekly payroll by recycling real pounds and kilograms of waste than by attacking those workers for not single-handedly fixing the planet. The Gotcha press lives in liberal and conservative venues, and should not herd us all into mediocratic nihilism. The "Recycling is Garbage" meme does not improve our society, but causes some reactionaries to throw aluminum cans into a trash bin... a clear harm.
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