How Green Was My Dummy

There's this thing that King Lear does that might very well cause me to lose my mind.

It's simple, really. So simple in fact that only an idiot would have any confusion about it.

It's his inability to recycle.

Lear has a black, regular trash can in which to discard things. Sitting DIRECTLY next to it, SO CLOSE THAT IT'S EVEN TOUCHING, is a recycling bin. The recycling bin takes such varied items as plastics and mixed papers. Really, you can throw just about anything in there, and it'll get recycled.

Every day, I go in and see huge amounts of paper and plastic water bottles in his regular trash bin. I grit my teeth, pull the stuff out, and move it to the recycle bin. I drop hints. I give dirty looks. It doesn't matter. You'd think he'd notice that all his papers are sitting in the recycle bin and that the trash bin seems to be emptying itself magically, but I guess he doesn't. It MUST be that he doesn't notice, because I don't want to hear that he doesn't care.

This, again, is a completely commonplace phenomenon company-wide, even though this studio is considered to be a company on the forefront of green technology and practices. People don't CARE. They don't get it, they don't see it, and they don't care. There is opportunity all around them to recycle, to power down, to conserve in general and they just don't do it.

I think social ostracism is the only way to make it happen. As a temp, this involves making sure that your disdain and disgust is voiced loudly and with purpose. You can get away with this more as a temp than a real employee because you are, on some level, seen as the objective observer. "Can you BELIEVE these people, putting water bottles in the trash?" I say, "Why are they even USING water bottles when there's a water cooler right there and they have their own glasses?" "Why the hell did you leave your monitor on overnight?" "You ordered a plastic takeout box and then ate it there? Why not use a plate?" "Wait, you want me to print out a 168 page PDF when it's totally readable online?" "Who was the numbskull who ordered virgin paper?" etc.

The bin is one inch to your left, sir. One inch.