We're in a rural area of California, where garbage pickup is an optional service performed by a private firm. By law, the firm is required to provide curbside recycling for customers.

But we're a quarter-mile from the road, and animals tend to knock over garbage cans that are left by the road, so very few people make use of garbage pickup. I take mine to a Dumpster where I do volunteer work in the City of Scaramento, and we have a separate Dumpster for recycling. Most of the neighbors burn their trash (although I think that's mostly illegal now), or store it and make an occasional run to the dump. And then there are other people who just find a convenient spot and dump their trash wherever they like. I cleared 6 tires from our roadside this week. Illegal dumping is a real problem here.

The dumps charge a $20 recycling fee for televisions and computer monitors, so people seem to like to dump their cathode ray tubes at roadside. California now charges a recycling fee when you buy a TV or monitor, but the dumps still charge their fees. Seems like there's a problem there.

I have a wife who's a compulsive recycler, and I've been trying to tame her. It's hard to convince her that it's wasteful to drive ten miles to a place that will recycle a pound of styrofoam - my usual service in Sacramento doesn't recycle styrofoam.

But in general, California has pretty good laws to encourage recycling. Some U.S. conservatives think recycling and global warming talk and all forms of conservation are a leftist plot to destroy the American Way of Life, and that may be why recycling is not found very often in states with conservative majorities.

-Joe Offer-