TheBanyanTree: Early recycling

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

July 6st, 2019


Yo tribe!


	I don’t want to disturb the silence.  (That should be the whole post, right?)  BUT:

		I just remembered something.  My mother,  Meyshe and I were speaking about the environment and how just a few decades ago no one even thought about it.  Certainly when I was growing up, people just tossed everything out without any idea of the finite nature of the world and its resources.  But then there were ONLY 3 billion people on the planet.  My how you’ve grown.

	Around about the early '70s things began to change swiftly.  Here’s the story I remember.

	My very best friend and I had just been called to pick up my little brother and his friends from whatever it was that they were doing.  On the way back to mini central station, the wee youths got hungry and complained about their emptiness. (No, it didn’t go any deeper than bellies.)  One of them, not my brother, suggested we stop by MacDonald’s.  Yvonne and I grimaced but complied.  I was driving (VW bus, no less) and pulled into the parking lot of the nearest McD’s.  The teenagers piled out, ran in, ordered, grabbed the edible loot and came charging back.  There was lots of crumpling and rustling going on in the back seat(s).  One of the kids happened to look on the outside of a container and saw the triangle with the three arrows chasing each others’ tails.  You know the sign.  Underneath the triangle was the word:  RECYCLABLE.   The kid looked at me and Yvonne in the front seats and asked, "What does this mean?"

	Yvonne took a cursory rude look at it and said, "It means: We didn’t, but you can."   

	And that’s just one of the reasons she’s my best friend.


	I’ve of course got lots more to say, but this passed inspection for, "things I will allow myself to think about today."

Carry on!

Tobie



















"While the mind thinks of ways to destroy the enemy, the heart thinks of ways to heal the enemy."       Meyshe B. Shapiro-Nygren





Tobie Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>