This post may well give Al Gore a Gorgasm.

I finally gave in and picked up one of the big green (non-biodegradable, mind you) plastic bins for recycling from City Hall. It is bin number 666. Some people play Devil's Advocate; apparently, I play Devil's Recycler.

The instruction sheet they gave me reveals recycling to be a complicated and cryptic process. Instead of just listing ALL the materials they will pick up, the paper breaks them up into Several Groupings, and Each Grouping Is Numbered. It doesn't say anything about us having to seperate the materials. I guess whoever wrote the instructions just thought they Ought To Be Numbered.

I'm going to seperate them anyway, just in case. Besides, it will give me a way to get rid of more plastic grocery bags, which by the way Do Not Appear to be On The List.

You have to wash out glass and plastic containers, which begs the question -- which future would you impose on the planet - one with too much trash, or one without enough water? I wonder if it would wash them out good enough if I put them outside in the front yard until it rains.

Forget that; some things are too cheap and white trashy even for me.

So why, after decades of griping about granola-munching, caribou-loving tree-huggers, am I beginning to recycle NOW? Am I going to grow my hair long, wear beads, smell like pachouli, and insist that there are no absolutes, because I really really DIG Mother Earth, man?

Hell no. I don't give a flip about the planet. As long as it outlasts me, I'll be happy.

But what about our children, you ask?

"We" don't have any children. YOU might have a child or some childrens, but they are not "Our" children; they are yours. And whatever future you want to give them, the responsibility to pay for it lies in YOU, not in US.

Okay, we know what is NOT the reason, so what IS the reason?

Simple. It's the noblest motive of all -- to save me money. By burning the paper content, I've already reduced my trash from two bags a week to one bag every two weeks. That's cut my trash-bag costs by 75%. Chucking my tin cans, milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, spaghetti sauce jars and the like into the recycle bin instead of the trash can may reduce my trash bag costs another 75% or maybe more.

But they're NOT getting my soda cans. Not as long as I can get paid to recycle them elsewhere.