Theory Versus Practice, Garbage Edition

One of my favorite jokes: In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.

Recycling seems like a clean idea. Instead of throwing things away to rot in a landfill or, worse, not rot in a landfill but simply stay there forever, you reuse the material to cut down on pollution. In reality, the process begins with collecting an enormous amount of garbage. I was standing by the Newtown Creek a little while ago when a barge went by…

Note the name: this is barge number 6. That’s a big, big pile of plastic, metal, and glass garbage, surrounded by chain-link fencing so that none of it flies away in the wind, possibly heading for the big Department of Sanitation solid-waste management facility in Sunset Park. (There’s another facility in Queens on the Newtown Creek, but the barge in question was heading away from it, west toward the East River.)

This may seem trivial, but I have run into more than my fair share of people who think new buildings are pure and pristine, and old ones are dirty and contaminated. I give you my word that old buildings can be cleaned, and that new ones have to be kept stocked with poison during construction to keep rodents away. Things that we expect to be clean aren’t as clean as we might hope, and things that we expect to be dirty aren’t as bad as we fear. Along those lines, the barge was refreshingly clear of the cloud of seagulls I expect to see scavenging anywhere there’s any food to be had.