Go On, Punish Yourself.

It’s Wednesday evening, and my humble abode is currently filled with the underlying aroma of spicy tikka chicken, beef stroganoff and Amstel beer. The beer smell is probably due to me having consumed copious amounts of it today, somehow managing to spill it down my shirt as well as my shorts.

The chicken and beef odours however, are due to the fact that I am one of the 7.5% of urban South Africans who make the effort to recycle.

A recent study conducted by a local university – the name escapes me now, but it was definitely a local one – found that people who recycle in this country are three times as likely to be masochists than those who do not. Looking at the process involved, it’s very easy to see why.

Unlike other countries, in South Africa your recycled rubbish will not be collected from your home – well, apparently it can be, but with the effort required to find the correct phone number and then actually getting them to come around and collect it – you are probably more likely to be run over by a herd of Knysna elephants, or be magically transformed into a pile of yellow fairy dust by an evil Irish leprechaun.

Instead, you are forced to cart around heavy bags of glass, plastic and paper to numerous recycling depots around the city. We (and by we I mean The Girlfriend) will usually drop off our smelly bags of rubbish at a nearby spot run by a handful of enthusiastic and slightly retarded workers. (Not parliament in case you are wondering, this happens to be a spot in Claremont)

Before it get’s to that stage however, the onus is on you to sort and recycle your rubbish according to various categories, categories I did not even know existed until The Girlfriend put a knife to my throat one day and made me swear to recycle correctly.

For instance, did you know that there are seven different types of plastic? Seven? To put it into context, there are more types of plastics than I have pairs of socks, and I always assumed I had an acceptable amount of sock wear, albeit having to wear the same pair over weekends. But yes, at the bottom of most plastic containers, you will notice a set of numbered codes, usually from 1 to 7. The ones marked 1 and 2 are fine to recycle, the others are not, although what you are actually meant to do with them is a bit of a mystery. (Burying them in The Girlfriend’s vegetable garden did not earn me the plaudits I had expected, but rather a stiff kick in the groin. Twice in fact, as she only connected with the one testicle the first time.)

If you though that glass would be a fairly easy material to identify and recycle, you would sadly be mistaken. You see, like a racial bygone area, it seems that different glass colours are not allowed to mix – meaning that clears, greens and browns should all be segregated and clearly labeled accordingly.

There are even limitations when it comers to paper, which the Recycle Police insist should be dry and free of food, wax or any oils. Other contaminated substances such as dry semen are also frowned upon, instantly ruling out my vast collection of Scope and Loslyf (Loose Body) magazines I keep in my “memory box” under the bed.

What this all comes down to is a lot of effort on the part of the recycler, with zero to minimal satisfaction derived from it. Sure, you can happily believe you’re doing your bit to save the planet, until you see your neighbour looking even happier than you are, as he dumps all his glass, 7 types of plastic, together with his dry and semen-stained paper into a large unrecyclable box outside.

This is usually when you realize the losing battle you’re in, and the thought of toiling away aimlessly, getting your hands dirty rinsing plastics and glass, and having your house smelling like a brewery while the fat guy next door merrily kills the planet anyway causes you to gag momentarily and you have to battle to stay on your feet and not throw up.

And yet, somehow the moment passes and you soon realize that you are standing there with a bit of a semi, and so you toil away regardless, as clearly you are getting some kind of kick out of all of this.

Am I alone here?

Oakes signing off.

PS: See the recycling guide to see what I’m talking about.

Shaun Oakes

This was written by the hulking mass of manliness known as Shaun Oakes. If you enjoyed what he had to say, you owe it to yourself to follow him on Twitter at @shaunoakes. Do it now.