I tried to be a green citizen, but the City of Dallas wouldn't let me

I really wanted to be a heavy-duty recycler. Back in the days before we had roll carts in my hood, we would dutifully place black bags containing the ordinary trash and the blue bags (when we could find them) containing the recycling out in the alley every Tuesday. I normally had three blue bags for every black bag.

Then, earlier this year we got word that we were going to be issued the gray garbage roll carts and the blue recycling roll carts as our hood switched to what was being billed as "One Day Dallas." Since then, the collection service has gone into the pits. Oh, not the garbage. Although I still don't have that much garbage, it does seem that my cart gets emptied every Tuesday.

But not my recycling cart. It started out OK, but has disintegrated into non-existent. Each Monday night, I place my recycling cart in the alleyway. Each Tuesday night, for the last six consecutive weeks, I come home to find it still filled. So I dutifully trot inside to the computer, go to the City of Dallas' Web page and file one of those clumsy 3-1-1 reports. I will say this -- usually within two to three days of filing the report, someone does come by mysteriously and empties the cart. So it is getting picked up, just never on the day it's supposed to be and not without my going to the trouble of filing through 3-1-1. I don't get it. Why can't the recycling crews pick it up when it's scheduled to be picked up?

But I don't care about that anymore, because you really can't -- and I know from years of experience inside and out -- fight City Hall. Sometimes a graceful surrender is in order. So here's my white flag, I'm finished recycling. In my last 3-1-1 report, I instructed whoever reads these things (but knowing City Hall as I do, that's no human being with more than a third-grade intelligence) to please take the blue recycling cart with them when they pick up the recycling sometime this week.

And if they don't take the cart -- if I come home from work to simply find a empty blue cart again -- I'm taking the damn thing to one of my favorite isolated bridges over the Brazos River and casting it over the side. Then, again, I might see if I can just feed it to this thing. Perhaps my one final act of recycling defiance can at least benefit some school kid in Arlington.