Monday, July 1, 2013

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Spam is everywhere, on our computers and our smart phones, and in our mailbox.  I have become accustomed to the expectation that almost every day my mailbox will be full of very little useful actual letters, and mostly fliers for some course or some restaurant or some fix-it professional.

Yesterday when Raphaela and I returned from Gan, the floor of the lobby of our building was littered, like snow, with the day's supply of spam fliers.  Israelis in general tend to pay less attention to garbage lying on the ground, because "someone else will pick it up" and eventually someone else will clean up the planet when we are long gone.

I recycle what I can and what Jerusalem allows at the moment, mostly paper and plastic, and if you can find a recycling center, batteries and old tech.  For some reason - the blistering heat, my lack of sleep, my becoming more Israeli after 16 years - on this day I walked right past the junk on the floor and toward the elevator.

My daughter stopped me and said, "Mommy, who made this mess?"  When I didn't immediately respond, she said, "Mommy, someone has to pick it up!"  And when I didn't immediately react, Raphaela pulled me over to the papers and the fliers, handed them to me and said, "Mommy, WE have to clean it up and recycle.  We can't walk by and just leave it here."

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