Dear Esteemed Curators of the Golden Gate’s Garbage,
First, let me extend my deepest gratitude for your tireless commitment to ensuring that discarded Amazon and Blue Apron meal kit boxes are not just thrown away—but presented with the ceremonial reverence typically reserved for royal decrees, origami competitions, or Martha Stewart’s Christmas morning.
You see, I recently attempted to recycle some cardboard. Foolishly, I thought breaking it down and placing it on top of the bin would suffice. But no. According to your guidelines—which read less like municipal sanitation policy and more like an excerpt from an Ikea cabinet disassembly manual—what you actually require is that I:
• Bundle my cardboard if I have “more than fits in the recycling cart,” because of course the onus is on me to possess a master’s degree in the Physics of Volume.
• Form each bundle into a 2’ x 2’ x 2’ cube—as if I own a laser cutter, a square ruler, and an additional master’s degree in Three-Dimensional Spatial Engineering.
• Tie each bundle with twine or string (but absolutely no plastic tape, lest you summon the wrath of the refuse gods).
• Place said bundle beside the cart, where it shall await judgment.
• And finally, if any cardboard is greasy, it must be placed in a different cart, because even our trash must be segregated by moral purity.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure if I was recycling or prepping for a Williams Sonoma Holiday Catalog photo shoot.
I spent the better part of my morning transforming a stack of delivery boxes into what looked like a rustic, twine-bound bale of ancient papyrus fit for Queen Nefertiti’s altar.
And still, your collector drove by without picking it up. Why? Because I used jute instead of cotton string? Because one of the boxes had the faint odor of Withersbrook Blue cheese from a Jasper Hill Farm cheese club order purchased in a moment of gastronomic weakness?
I respect rules. I compost. I rinse my cans. I once wiped the peanut butter off a recyclable lid with a paper towel I later composted like some eco-guilt-ridden suburban monk. But your cardboard bundling policy has left me a broken man, weeping beside a perfectly cubed and ribboned package that would make even Tiffany & Co. jealous. While the wind whispers, “You missed a corner.”
So please—tell me what you really want. A hand-calligraphed tag on each bundle? A note of gratitude taped to the twine? A sprig of eucalyptus? Should I bring out a goatskin drum and perform a binding ritual under the full moon to ensure compliance?
Or maybe—just maybe—we could all agree that cardboard, no matter how it’s bundled, is still cardboard. And that our shared environmental mission might survive if a slightly asymmetrical bundle is tossed into the truck without triggering a countywide Code Orange.
Until then, I remain,
Respectfully yours in twine and despair,
Wimpily Anonymous
Larkspur, CA
P.S. Our unkempt mutt Groucho concurs with the tenor of this missive.
