Garbage In, Garbage Out

Why is doing the right thing so hard?

Since I find myself with a bit of time on my hands, I’ve also been using this as an opportunity to clean up my place. I’ve been here almost 13 years and it’s amazing how stuff just accumulates if you let it. To pick an example, I had an old computer and a bunch of random cables to dispose of, as well as a few other odds and ends. Now I know, you’re saying to yourself, Jane, don’t get rid of those cables, as soon as you do you will need them (so be it). San Francisco used to have a handy place you could drop off e-waste in the Mission, but that’s closed right now and their only other facility is on Tunnel Road which in addition to being pretty far away is not really somewhere I’m schlepping a computer. The perils of my car-free life.

Thankfully, other businesses do pick up the slack, and you can drop off an old computer or monitor at Best Buy (really!). They also took all my cabling. But they would not take an old smartwatch. Which meant a quick trip up to Sports Basement where they do have a bin you can drop those kinds of items off in. Two busses, two stops, and 60 minutes later, I finally freed up a little space around my place and I can move onto the next items I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of (does anybody want an old hiking backpack?). How many hours will I spend on those items? What corners of the city will they send me to?

The whole time I’ve been trying to figure out how to donate, trash, or recycle old items while I’ve got the chance I’ve been wondering the same thing: why is it so damn hard to do this the proper way? Why is doing the right thing such a challenge? It definitely doesn’t feel like it has to be this way when it comes to something as simple as keeping your place in order, let alone in other ways. Every webpage you go to tells you to check or confirm with someone else, too. No one wants to be liable for their own bad information so it’s caveated beyond usefulness and you cannot find any solid information far too often. I was mostly sure when I walked into Best Buy they would take my computer, but I wasn’t certain. What a farce.

But I did the right thing, right? It’s nice to think that life rewards the moral and the conscientious, but does it? There certainly don’t seem to be consequences for my neighbors who just dump shit on the sidewalk I see all around the Richmond. I’m still the one reporting that on 311. If anything, I’ve largely seen the city remove trash cans, I guess in an attempt to deter people from illegally dumping next to them? Which feels like some damn upside down tactics. And while the stakes of these examples are relatively low, one certainly does not have to look far in life to see plenty of examples of life not rewarding people doing the right thing at just about every level of our lives. I think about all the other ways I’m trying to do the right thing. And I think about all the ways I’m not, I just don’t have the energy to do the ethical thing, that it doesn’t really matter.

The trash can at 7th and Cabrillo looks like this way too much

As years of anti-financial crimes related training has taught me, though, ethics is what you do when no one is looking. No one is making me go through all this trouble. I’m just trying to do right by my neighbors, my city, my environment. I could just throw that shit on the sidewalk like too many others. But that’s not who I am. As evidenced by the fact that I went through all that trouble. But I do think a lot that if we want people to do the right thing, it behooves us to make the right thing easier for most people. Sometimes (frequently) doing the right thing is harder than it needs to be. How many people are bringing their heavy plastic bags to Safeway to recycle them because that’s what you are supposed to do with them? And how come we’re still getting them from businesses despite multiple laws at municipal and state levels that are supposed to stop that?

I come back to the fact that these are systems problems a lot. Many such examples. But it being a systems problem doesn’t absolve one from doing the right thing in the moment. Every beautiful day like today, I know I’m going to see a lot of examples of people taking the expedient path when I go by the trash cans in Golden Gate Park and just piling stuff up nearby when they are full. Neatly, most of the time, they aren’t monsters. But still in a way that trash pandas are gonna rifle through it all first and make a mess. And yes, we should have more trash cans that make it easier to do the right thing for most folks, and it’s a bit vexing that we don’t. But in the meantime, is it really that much trouble to pack out what you pack in? The answer appears to be yes in many cases!

In fact, I think systems problems require working on both ends. We got a little bit too much of that “100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions” energy where some people seem to think individual actions don’t matter at all. When it’s the combination of the two, after all, both what we do in the quiet moments when no one is looking and how we fight for systemic change to prevent those problems going forward. In short, we need more pizza box trash cans (or their equivalent in many other places). It solves a systems problem and it creates the opportunity for people to do the right thing!

In the meantime, it’s onto the next set of items for me. But imma keep thinking about what we can do at a neighborhood or city level to make this easier. Create opportunities for the behavior you want to see and all that. And if you got any questions about how to get rid of something, ask, I’ve been doing too much research, I may already know.