Growing up, my dad often recruited me to help him do a run to our county’s recycling center. We lived in a small, rural town in the south not serviced by garbage trucks, so it was up to us to haul our trash and recycling there. This involved packing up our small trailer full of the waste we’d accrued over the past couple weeks, journeying out to an even more remote area, and chucking bags into bins at the center.
When I moved to New York City, a whole new world of convenience opened up to me. There were bodegas open 24 hours a day. I didn’t need a car and could instead rely on public transportation. And the farthest I had to lug my trash and recycling was out to the curb each week so a couple of noisy, bumbling trucks would come and make it magically disappear.
What a luxury.
