Local News Tuesday: Recycling—So Easy A Caveman Can Do It

The mid-sized, towable recycling trailers outside of Skyland Elementary were disturbingly empty. As I emptied the three large, handled paper retail sacks from The Gap and Pottery Barn that my husband and I had begun using as makeshift recycling bins into the recycling trailer that was closest to the road, I was overcome by the vastly empty, lonely feeling that I was the only person in Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City, who recycled. Anything.

The recycling trailer itself seemed to support this fear in appearance alone. Parked next to two others on a poorly mown strip of patchy grass next to the older elementary school, the trailer and its trailer friends were painted a stark bathroom white, mottled with patches of rust. In shape, they looked like huge, elongated coffins with sharply angled tops. Across the tops were five separate black doors, individually hinged and made from the same tough plastic as industrial 40 gallon trash cans, like five large cabinets. The doors were at shoulder height to your average adult standing on the ground, but they were angled and tall, which meant that opening them required you to stand very close to the trailer and exert a fair amount of force. They were also lettered in all caps—CARDBOARD, PLASTIC BOTTLES AND MILK JUGS, MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS, IRON AND ALUMINUM CANS. To dispose of your recyclables, you lifted the appropriate door and dumped the appropriate material into the appropriate compartment within the recycling trailer.

I started with the cardboard. Cardboard was the label on the leftmost door. Being an English major, it made sense to me to move from left to right, and besides, I had a station wagon–hatchful of broken down moving boxes that Expat and I had used in at least three or our past five moves and that were now too ratty to keep or pass on. Thankfully, all of them would be just small enough to pass through the door on the recycling trailer, so I heaved the door open and got started.

Heaving the door open to any large industrial steel bin is enough to cause me some small amount of anxiety, particularly in the South or during the warmer summer months in colder climes. Aside from the obvious fear of stench or decay, there is always the secondary fear of other things living in the industrial steel bin, like giant roaches or the occasional rat or possibly a stray possum. The Dumpster in the garden home complex where my mother lives in Southern Alabama, for example, is known for the skittering of large roaches, the contingent of angry wasps that guard the trash very closely, and the rather industrious raccoon that like to stare at you with reflective, beady eyes should you decide to walk your trash to the Dumpster during his prime foraging hours of about 10PM to 5AM. It had been a while since my last encounter with angry wasps or a raccoon. Admittedly, the trailers being set as they were against a lovely backdrop of open, abandoned lot and noisy highway and surrounded by absolutely no useful cover didn’t seem an especially conducive environment for larger mammalia. And in theory, since the trailers contained recyclables and not garbage, I shouldn’t have to contend with any of the pests frequently associated with decaying food. So while somewhat reticent, I nonetheless stepped in close to the trailer, swung open the lid-like door, and stood on my tiptoes to peer inside before heaving my crumpled boxes into the trailer’s belly.

What I saw inside did not do much to reassure me.

What I saw inside of the compartment so clearly labeled CARDBOARD were about a dozen 20 ounce plastic bottles and a glossy advertising supplement from the Sunday paper.

Since I've just moved from a state where signs like “Welcome to Middleton, Wisconsin’s Recycling Leader!” commonplace, the lack of recycling in Tuscaloosa has trumped even the lack of Quality Coffee Shops and the overwhelming lack of Quality Cheese. Here is a city where “trash” and “recycle bin” mean one in the same to most people, where rather than walk an extra 6 inches (inches!) to recycle the aluminum can they just finished chugging Diet Dr. Pepper from, they will simply throw it into the trash can and move on. Here is a city that does not recycle glass. At all. Never mind that, unlike plastics, glass can be recycled indefinitely because its actual molecular structure doesn’t deteriorate when it’s reprocessed. We’d rather just throw it away so the animal foraging in the landfill can get all cut up. Stupid animals. What are they doing in our landfills anyway?

Having gone to undergraduate in Birmingham, just a short 45 minute drive away from Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City, I thought I understood the Southern mindset on recycling: I’ll do it as long as I don’t have to do any extra work. The Pricey Liberal Arts College (PLAC) I attended did a wonderful job of this: recycling bins were on every floor of every dorm, prominently displayed in every academic building, and extras were placed at prominent entrances to things like the library. They were clearly labeled. They were, in many cases, closer than the trash cans. At Big State U up in the section of Pennsylvania that most natives refer to as Pennsyltucky—known primarily for its trout and its rivalry with Indiana for the highest annual enrollment in the KKK—they’ve taken things a step further. Recycle bins are not only prominently displayed in all of the buildings across campus, they also stand side-by-side with trash cans at every corner in downtown Small Town. Even the homeless people in Small Town recycle. I know. I’ve seen them.

The thing that gets me though—that really gets me—is that while the majority of people in other parts of the country might indeed identify as Christian, no one flaunts it as much as the folks south of Mason-Dixon. That Bible Belt moniker? They’re proud of it. Jesus is more than all right with them. So if we all love God, and if God created the earth, and if the earth is God’s “footstool,” as he mentions once or twice, and if he decided to “glorify the place of his feet” with firs and pines and whatnot like he says in Isaiah, then shouldn’t we be all about some glorification of God’s feet, too? Perhaps we could at least reconsider throwing glass away for God to step on.

This month at the Not-Quite-A-Mega-Church-But-Trying where I now work (when I’m not teaching for Flagship State U) has been Stewardship Month. Stewardship Month is really just church lingo for Money Month, or for Tithe-So-We-Can-Run-The-A.C. Month. For the past four weeks, the head pastor has been putting a brand new spin on the same old message: give God back his money, people. God’s the reason you have it, it’s not really yours, and so on. But as long as we’re being good Christians down here in the Bible Belt, what about being good stewards of the rest of that which God gives us? You know, um, the planet? Right. If we were really concerned with good stewardship, you’d think they’d be able to walk 10 feet to recycle. You’d think they wouldn’t leave it to those crazy Norwegians up in Wisconsin to make up for the havoc the good ol’ boys are wreaking.

And if that’s not enough to make you reconsider, think of it this way: if the man was turning water into wine, I would be willing to bet—only a small amount, since Jesus doesn’t really condone the whole gambling thing—that he would be all about turning old beer bottles into Glassphalt for paving some roads. Or, if you’re more into the phenomenological end of things, thinks of it as rebirth, resurrection: forget Easter baskets. This spring, lets trot out festively painted recycling baskets. Far fetched? Not really. Which one would teach your kids more about death and resurrection: bunny-shaped baskets full of teeth-rotting, calorie-rich sugary crap or taking a pile of dead cans to the recycling center?

Friends, luddites, people of Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City: what would Jesus do, here? What would Jesus do?

The Black Warrior Files: Who’d Have Thought That Love Could Be So Caffeinated?

Tus • ca • loo • sa (tŭs'kə-lōō'sə) noun

1. An overly fashion-conscious, football-mad college town nestled in the big bend of the Black Warrior River. Established 1819. Population ≈ 80,000.
2. The home location for Scooter Nation (ironically lacking in scooters or any other fuel efficient vehicle).

[Origin: Choctaw/Native American black warrior; diriv. tushka, meaning warrior, and lusa, meaning black. For Choctaw Chief Tushkalusa, circa 1500s]

The city of Tuscaloosa has exactly one Quality Coffee Shop and I am currently sitting in it, as I tend to do, doing work on a Saturday afternoon and sipping a perfect sugar-free, fat-free latte (per Virtual’s individualized nutrition plan), or as Expat calls it, a Why Bother. At least, I tell him, it’s not a Super Why Bother. A Super Why Bother is sugar-free, fat-free, caffeine-free, and really, at that point, why bother indeed?

Sugar-free or not, Capture Studio Cafe makes the best lattes in town. This is partly because all of the baristas are arts and humanities majors or graduates; as we all know, a degree in the humanities develops excellent critical thinking skills and qualifies you to work one of three places: a coffee shop, an Italian restaurant, or a bookstore. The good lattes, however, are also largely due to the good coffee that the owner/proprietor of Capture, let’s call him Taylor the Latte Boy (TLB), uses in all of the shop’s coffee creations.

Now, Expat and I got all high on locally roasted coffee when we first moved to Madison and discovered Just Coffee. Local businesses could sponsor different kinds of roasts and, since Just Coffee is based in Madison, the roaster would roast them up, slap store-specific logos on them, and the sponsoring stores would sell them by the pound. The ACE Hardware on Willy Street was the place for the ACE Black and Tan blend. Jenny Street Market sold its great medium roast. Revolution Cycles peddled Revolution Roast, a dark, oily bean that made the whole house smell dark and nutty and warm. But good local coffee was just par for the course in Madison: every shop (and their were lots of shops), it seemed, marketed its own variety of locally roasted something-or-other, most of it fair trade, all of it 800 times tastier than the burnt-beans served up at the local Starbucks.

Fastforward. Scene change. Welcome to Tuscaloosa, Our Fair City, home to the University of Alabama, a mediocre SEC football team, no fewer than 15 barbeque purveyors, an oddly prevalent number of good consignment shops, and only four local coffee shops. Of the four, two are on The Strip, the major student area immediately off-campus, and are therefore Ridiculously Busy. One is an oddly Christian gifty-type shop just across the river in the neighboring community of Northport; it sells Foofy Coffee, big muffins, good shortbread cookies, and pretty much anything sterling silver that can be emblazoned with a cross. Which brings us back to Capture.

Capture started as a video production and photography company. It’s in the historic downtown part of Tuscaloosa in the bottom floor of an extremely cool historic 3-story, a little less than a mile away from The Strip, and a block away from the good consignment shop where we sometimes find Really Good Stuff for Really Cheap Prices. It’s too far for much undergraduate traffic but just right for professors and grad students who like working away from their desks. Now, I haven’t specifically asked TLB about the exact evolution, but to the best of my knowledge, the coffee shop was just a happy byproduct of having this company in this space in downtown Tuscaloosa, almost as if TLB and his crew of arts and humanities majors sat down, put their heads together and said hey, while we’re working on photos with these jittery brides or developing webpages for these hapless businessmen, why not ply them with a kicky atmosphere and some caffeinated goodness? Why not put our artistic talents to good use and come up with a clever urban logo and paint scheme and room design? Why not furnish the place completely in tables and chairs and couches from IKEA? And while we’re at it, let’s work up a good menu for that Panini press and oh, what the heck, let’s use some local, socially responsible coffee!

Higher Ground Roasters are located over in Leeds, Alabama, due east on I-20, in between Birmingham and Atlanta. They believe in buying fair trade, shade grown coffee at a fair price from farmers using sustainable farming practices. They sponsor local causes, like Black Warrior Riverkeeper and the local Literacy Council. Their goals, as stated by them: “To purchase the best coffee available anywhere, to roast it to perfection, and to make it available—fresh—to anyone.” That’s what Expat got excited about when he found their website one day up in Madison, while taking a break from packing. He had hitherto been making elaborate plans to keep our household well-stocked in Just Coffee—bringing a case of it with us, ordering it online, getting friends to ship it down on a regular basis, but one night he looked up from the laptop and smiled. “Honey, look! There’s a local coffee roaster in Alabama!”

“There is?!”

Having spent 12 of my formative years in the Heart of Dixie, I considered myself a fairly good authority on What Alabama Had and What Alabama Sure As Hell Had Not. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Alabama frequently gets a bad rap (yes, we have indoor plumbing—you’re thinking of Mississippi; no, we do not sit on our porches and play “Dueling Banjos”—you’re thinking of Georgia), but let’s be honest, Alabama—specifically Tuscaloosa—is not known as a major outpost of culture and open-minded social consciousness. By my reckoning, Alabama Had: barbeque; fried catfish; sweet tea; Republicans; guns; armadillos; banana pudding; Old Shitty Cars jacked up on New Giant Tires with Super Shiny Rims; katydids; roaches; water moccasins; Jesus; pickup trucks sporting decorative Rebel Flag frontplates, gun racks and multiple six-foot-tall antennas skewering paint-protecting tennis balls; Antebellum Houses with Large Porches; azaleas; SEC Football; Civil Rights museums; a boll weevil monument; peanuts; cotton; white sandy beaches; hurricanes; and a Small Contingent of Intelligent Liberals. Alabama Had Not: local coffee roasters; hybrid cars; Real Maple Syrup.

Yet here I sit on a blustery Alabama fall afternoon, drinking a warm Why Bother out of a kicky oversized mug, marveling at the tasty goodness of Capture’s fair trade house blend (Bolivian, medium roast).

Like I said, Quality.