I'm Killing the Earth.

The kids and I spent about 45 minutes breaking down boxes to be recycled tomorrow morning. We hauled the piles outside, and by "piles" I mean "holy hell we are so frickin' consumerific".
We stacked all those pieces of cardboard into two neat stacks.
We then placed the two recycling bins on top of the two neat piles of cardboard, with a paperbag of loose paper that weighed easily fifteen pounds in between. (Because, you see, while we don't have to sort plastic from glass, Paper. Does. NOT. Go. IN. The. BINS. (But the hell if I'm binding the loose papers with twine. The BAG is made of paper. You may recycle that, too! (Who even owns twine? And if you do, you shouldn't admit to it in public.)))
The theory is the bins will keep the piles of cardboard from blowing all down the street. And across the street. And up (yes, UP) the hill that pretends to be our driveway. And up that other hill that is actually a cliff that is the neighboring property. Like it did last recycling day. Dammit. I got my slippers wet and the recycling dude (who, I hope, keeps his spare teeth at home in a glass waiting for him to take a shower and be civilized when he's finished saving the planet? Because I pretty much wash my recyclables, so I don't know what the rest of you guys are doing to your recyclables to make that guy so dirty. Using them for a toilet, I imagine) saw me without a bra when I was chasing cardboard into the ditch. For godssake, the man's job is hard enough without having to see me like that.
The end result is, I know I don't find all that cardboard, so not only am I bad recycler, I'm actually a polluter. I'm actually making the environment worse by recycling.
But it's the trying that counts. Which is a great lesson. For the kids. Because that's what it was. A lesson. Not me making them do my work help me because my ears were falling off from the cold.