Sunday, February 17, 2008

Peace without Printed Matter Pt.1



Free local newspapers, advertising brochures with shopping coupons, neighborhood weeklies, take-out menu’s and single-sheet ads for everything from chimney-sweeping and fortune telling to computer courses are plunked down on adjoining treads of the stone staircase leading up from the sidewalk to the front doors of four apartments, of which one is mine. In this country we have the option of pasting “Yes” or “No” stickers on the outside of mail slots, indicating acceptance or refusal of unsolicited printed matter. Some people are happy to find all of the above-mentioned stock lying inside on their door mat. The refusals can mount up, visually represented by the piles of paper cluttering the steps. Strong winds carry the loose sheets up and down the street. Paper, plastic bags, candy wrappers, cigarette butts and fallen leaves are blown to shelter behind the wheels of bicycles chained to the stands allotted by city authorities. Counter-gusts send a similar trail into shrubs and sturdy stems in the narrowest of strip gardens, created by removing concrete sidewalk tiles from the ground where the pavement meets the apartment building walls.

When advertisements from nearby stores lie on the steps for days, I have been known to carry the damp, dirty bundle over to the shops in question to point out that their expensive printing project was not going according to plan, and to ask them if they might renegotiate distribution contracts to include instructions that printed matter not be left in the open air. So far almost no one in the stores - however stressed by the environmentally-unfriendly evidence - has felt able to identify the point of origin of delivery, much less exert any influence. I abandoned that effort.

One day, as I walked down the street, I saw a woman pushing a shopping cart filled with printed matter. She was a middle-aged Dutch woman, very engaged with her work and completely open to conversation about recycling and keeping the streets clean. Apparently she had been instructed to leave bundles of paperwork halfway up the steps from the street, thereby encouraging residents themselves to retrieve items of their interest as they walk up to the apartment entrances. Going all the way up the stairs to check for “Yes” and “No” stickers on the mail slots was too time-consuming. And finding lots of “No” stickers would mean that she - with back troubles - would be stuck with excess matter at the end of her route, and it would all be thrown out anyway, so why not leave it on the steps, allowing residents who didn’t want it there to cart it off to the nearby paper recycling bins? She understood my point of view, however, and promised, whenever possible, to not leave papers lying around. I see her from time to time, but I’ve also noticed that certain kinds of hand-outs are now delivered by persons of foreign origin, badly dressed, thin - possibly undocumented workers, earning a pittance by handing out flyers. Most recycled paper from the Netherlands is sold to China for the immensely profitable recycling industry there, which, I now understand, is enormously polluting. The family behind China’s recycling industry has accumulated great wealth. I still do recycle, although I'm not sure why.