Lileks: Recycling says a lot about us, and some of it is true

The city of Minneapolis is considering a change in the recycling arrangement: You won't have to separate your stuff. Dump it all in a bin, and it gets sorted out downstream by robots or elves. (They're still working on the details.) This may increase recycling, thus saving the planet. We all want a saved planet, if only for later. Where's that planet? I knew I saved one somewhere. Oh, there it is.

Right now most people don't recycle. Less than 20 percent recycle; 42 percent lie, because saying you don't recycle is like saying you bathe in the blood of baby seals; 23 percent consider themselves recyclers if they donate used underwear to the Salvation Army, and the rest enjoy not recycling, going so far as to shout, "UP YOURS, GAIA" when they throw away a can.

The goal is 35 percent for Hennepin County -- which still would leave 65 percent of households chucking perfectly good frozen-food trays, instead of putting them on the curb so the plastic can be used for that cheese sauce used in frozen foods. Why don't they recycle? It's a proven good. Those of us who recycle think a spokesperson would describe our efforts thus:

"Basically, recycling makes sense. There's a tremendous after-market for newspapers. Not everything gets turned into tissues and bathroom tissue, or 'euphemism squares' -- about 40 percent gets sent overseas to impoverished countries that lack comic sections, so people in distant villages can catch up on the hijinx of Hi and Lois and their wacky brood's fractured take on family life.

"Cardboard is converted into greeting cards -- just bleach and add some Snoopy, that's our motto! Plastics are turned into super-absorbent Goodness Cubes that suck toxins out of the rainforest. Without people putting out their milk jugs every fortnight, over 75 percent of the Amazonian biosphere would die, including all those photogenic cute frogs. So keep it up! We're depending on you."

Perhaps the 65 percent who don't recycle suspect that a spokesman would say something different if you slipped him truth serum:

"Oh, once no one's looking, we burn it," said a spokesman. "Except cans. We sell the cans and use the money for lottery tickets. Newspapers? Well, here's the thing about paper. It grows on trees. Plastic can be reused for making park benches, which are then photographed for brochures to sell park benches made out of recycled plastic.

"We considered adding another category next year: shoelaces. People could think they were saving cotton or something. You'd have to tie up the laces with hemp twine and boil off the plastic tips. It would make people feel self-conscious and anti-planet if they threw away their laces, but that seemed like an abuse of power. So that's not gonna happen until 2014."

The truth might be somewhere in-between. But at least those who are on the fence feel obliged to pretend. They recycle just a little. It's like a token offering to a deity everyone else believes in, so why make waves.

Check their bins: One newspaper to indicate they're engaged with the world, one wine bottle to suggest a civilized evening with moderate friends, a half-dozen carefully crushed Coke cans, a quart of milk. When I'm walking the dog and see this array I want to shout I'M NOT BUYING IT. Either they're throwing away 48 beer bottles or melting down the glass in a backyard smelter.

Single-sort won't be cheap. We'll need new bins -- the city's report says they're $65 a pop, which would cost almost $7 million for the pilot program. That much? My fancy city-supplied bin broke long ago, and I've made do with twelve-buck Target tubs for 10 years.

They'll have to buy new trucks, too: eight trucks for the pilot program will cost almost $2 million. That's almost $10 million to encourage people who can't be bothered to sort right now.

The bill, of course, will be printed on recycled paper.