Minneapolis' new $1.2 billion budget includes money for the city's Zero Waste initiative, which will ensure that no zeros are wasted. They will be put in a bin to be used later — say, when they want to increase funding on something from $20,000 to $200,000.
Actually, no. the Zero Waste project foresees a city that has, well, no waste. Everything gets reused or recycled. Perhaps you already recycle everything, you think. Your grocery bag says it's made of 40 percent post-consumer material, which itself was made of 40 percent post-consumer material, and so on, and so on; the original tree was probably cut down in 1972, spent four years as a greeting card, and had an exciting 62 lives as a newspaper before it settled down into retirement as a grocery bag.
What else can be reused? Slimy grot, to use the technical term. Organics. The new budget has money for the ever-expanding organic-waste recycling program. Participation is optional, but you have to pay. (This is the point where Target and Wal-Mart whistle admiringly and say, "Man, are we in the wrong racket.")
Just one issue: Where am I going to get this organic waste? My garbage disposal minces everything into atoms. It is a loud, voracious beast, if a bit dramatic; a fork went down the disposal the other day, and it sounded like Godzilla having marital relations with a cement mixer. Give it dinner waste and it sounds as if it's gargling nails, but that soon turns into a smooth, high whine of satisfaction. I am well pleased with your offering. Someday I may ask for your fingers, but this is not that day.
Will it be antisocial — nay, heretical — to use the garbage disposal? If you're at a party and note that you threw away dog toenails instead of putting them in the bin, there will be shocked silence, as if you'd just said you spent your vacation strangling rare parrots in the Amazon.
Soon it'll be routine, and the days when it seemed acceptable to throw away dryer lint will seem as odd as pouring motor oil down the sewer drain. But it'll be expensive, and they'll have to find new revenue. Like licensing and inspection fees.
Say, for garbage disposals.
