The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future in

Recycling
Hi there--here, let me slide the wastebasket over... What? Oh, you're here for career ideas? I just figured you were looking for juice boxes in the garbage again. Recycling? I guess I could jot a few ideas down for... Oh, right--you go ahead and record it. No point putting ink on sacred flattened pulp if we don't have to.

So the first thing to remember is that there's no money in the recycling business--not if you are sincere about actually recycling, anyway. There are opportunities to, uhm, exploit the issue but I somehow figure that's not what you're about.

You'll keep volunteering every weekend down at the recycling depot until you graduate, then you'll find a college with an associate's degree in resource management or something similar which gives you a semblance of credibility when you expound your theories, but won't force you to waste a whole four years in school when you could be out making a real difference.

You'll keep volunteering at recycling operations at whatever city your college is in, and eventually you'll come back here--it's cheaper to mooch off your parents and like I said, you ain't getting rich off this gig. The folks here at the depot will welcome you back, and you'll try to be enthusiastic rather than jealous when you meet the new fresh-faced high schoolers who have replaced you as the eager disciples of the movement.

You'll commit 100% of your energy to making the depot an effective, efficient operation. You'll notice which organizations and businesses seem to generate the most waste and inundate them with emails and phone calls offering to provide free workshops to show them alternative choices to reduce the use of paper and other materials.

The few who relent and let you share your message only half-heartedly promote your visits, and you're saddened by how few show up to hear your lunch hour message of hope. You have, by this time, convinced the recycling depot to put you on a small salary, but your workshops are done entirely on your own time.

After almost a year of helping sort and carry bags and boxes of all manner of recyclables, you begin to get a little bored, and start to wonder about the next phase of the process. You see, you only deal with the "drop off" stage of things, so you decide one day to jump on your mo-ped and follow one of the large trucks which picks up the paper and cardboard from the depot. You've seen these large green trucks many times, and always been impressed by their bright clean paint, proclaiming the message: "Recycling--Local Action for Global Survival". As you follow the truck you're surprised by how little exhaust it produces--the hybrid engines run on a combination of electricity and biodiesel.

It's a longer journey than you expected, but eventually you arrive at a large property surrounded by trees--and a barbed-wire fence. The truck proceeds through the front gate, but a security guard stops you from following and asks you your business at the plant. You explain that you work at the recycling depot and just wanted to see where things went. The guard makes a quick phone call, summarizes your reason for the visit, then hangs up. He tells you to wait; the owner of the recycling plant is on site and has decided to come give you a tour.

You park your mo-ped and wait a few minutes; you're surprised when the owner actually arrives--he looks only a few years older than you. He explains as he walks you into the plant that he was at college working on his masters degree in environmental studies when his father, a rich industrialist, was killed in an accident and left his entire empire to his son. The son, Richard, sold off most of the corporate assets, and concentrated his efforts on this plant.

You are quickly impressed--it doesn't help that he's not bad looking--until the moment when you spot the large incinerators and see the trucks backing up to unload your "recycling".

You turn on him with the anger and vitriol of one who has seen the tenets of her faith defiled, and he merely nods and listens while you unload your venom. When you finally pause to catch your breath, he quietly responds.

"Most of what is sent to recycling depots is simply burned and/or dumped in landfills" he explains. "It's too dirty, it's contaminated or simply mis-sorted and can't be used. Even if it's perfectly clean and in order, it's ridiculously expensive to de-ink paper and repulp the various grades into something that turns out well enough for commercial use. The best we can do is contribute 10% of recycled filler to paper made of new fiber." You are shocked, but you'd heard similar cynical rumblings during your two years at college. You'd always dismissed such talk, but now Richard tells you it's true, but then he goes on to justify his actions.

It seems he's as passionate about alternative cleaner energy as you are about recycling. He explains that he created the plant when he heard of plans to build a coal-fired electricity production facility in the area. His plant incinerates waste, using technology he financed to produce electricity while creating very low emissions. He believes strongly that the future of the world is dependent on the reduction and eventual elimination of fossil fuels, and his newest research project involves partnering with the local sewage treatment plant to create methane for use as auto fuel.

You counter by pointing out that his trucks' use of biodiesel may be redirecting the use of valuable farmland away from food production in order to produce politically-correct but environmentally-unsound auto fuel. He sighs and admits he has the same concerns, then looks into your eyes and asks you to join him for dinner at a new vegetarian restaurant that he has recently invested in.

You agree, and after you've both cleaned up you find yourselves arguing by candlelight while enjoying a delicious meal. You both agree you feel passionately about saving the environment--you just have different approaches. You also discover you share some viewpoints--you almost choke with laughter as he does his impression of a sincere but misguided proponent of compact fluorescent light bulbs--you both smugly agree that such bulbs produce far more environmental damage in both their manufacture and ultimate disposal than they are worth in energy savings--particularly when any sensible person knows that LED lights are the green choice of the near future.

You end the night making out in front of your porch, then reluctantly agreeing to keep his secret about the recycling--he would lose his supply of fuel as well as the subsidy he gets for "recycling" the city's wastes. Plus his arguments about the foolishness of burning gas to ferry waste paper all over the continent to the few repulpers that can process such material made sense.

Still, your work at the depot now feels rather pointless. People ask you questions about sorting and you just sigh and shrug your shoulders.

Escape comes when your newfound boyfriend recommends you for a job at the local television station. Seems they've decided to create a new job in the newsroom--environmental reporter--and he convinces them that you're perfect for the job.

You're thrilled--you get to preach to the station's large prime-time evening news audience, and soon you're showing up all over town to salute those helping the environment, or to demonize those who disregard mother nature. You receive several awards for your work, and the better salary helps you save enough money to finally move out of your parents' home.

You and Richard are by this time officially a couple, and his wealth allows the two of you the chance to enjoy an exciting and environmentally-responsible lifestyle. Still, the luxury makes you feel guilty, and you become more and more inflexible in your work at the station, and in your personal life. Your feature is put on hiatus for a couple of weeks after one particularly controversial episode--the folks eating dinner while watching your story about the ancient alternative to toilet paper weren't very happy, it seems.

While on hiatus you continue researching new stories, and also notice more and more things which offend your sensibilities in the station itself. You nag everyone to eliminate the use of paper in all office communications, and start a movement to ban Christmas cards. Eventually, management decides to fire you, but a last-minute threat by your boyfriend to pull his company's advertising from the station gets you a reprieve.

The end of this career comes rather quickly. Seems Richard can't keep the secret of his recycling fraud forever; a network reporter gets wind of what's going on, and when you admit knowing the truth but keeping quiet to protect your lover, it's the end of your job in television.

You get a severance package and move back into your parents' basement. You send off a few half-hearted resumés, but you can't find many people willing to give you a decent reference--simply because most bosses and fellow employees find you and your fanaticism irritating. Meanwhile, a new company takes over the city's recycling contract and promises they won't be burning material which meets standard recycling criteria. You, however, know how unreasonable these criteria are and become more and more hysterical about it. Soon you're using a pass-key you kept after being fired from the station to sneak in at night and wash all the disposable coffee cup and pop cans in the recycling bins. You begin stealing all the staples from the staplers and posting notes reminding people of ways to fold pages to make them stick together instead of using staples for paper clips.

Your manic behaviour takes its toll; you collapse on the street and are rushed to the hospital where you are admitted for observation. You end up in the psyche ward, but manage to convince your watchers that you're fine--nobody catches you sneaking out to the biohazard disposal bins in the middle of the night where you retrieve all manner of used syringes, tongue depressors and even wound dressings, bringing them in and washing them down in the basement laundry room--abandoned when the hospital decided it was cheaper to farm out such duties.

You aren't careful enough, and after half a dozen needle sticks you're eventually diagosed with a variety of medical conditions which render you compostable within a year.