Going Green

Back in the fall of 2008, I threatened the staff almost every day: "In 2009 we're going green," I'd say. Every few days I'd say it, expecting grumbling and resistance. "That's good," they'd say, "that's what we need to be doing." Sometimes "Yeah, good idea, Kim, let's do that." Or "It's about time, Kim, how are we going to start?" Or even, "Why are we still talking about it?"

One slow cooking evening after everybody had gone home, I went to Home Depot and bought four bins. I took them to the kitchen and found a Sharpie: Paper, Glass, Alum and Plastic.

The prep folks and my partner were already there when I arrived the next morning.

"See the bins?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure, we saw 'em. They take up space."

"Don't you think it's important that we do this?" I asked.

"Sure, yeah. We've got a kitty."

"Kitty?"

"You know, for the money, when somebody screws up."

"Any money in it?"

"Nobody's screwing up."

It's not easy to recycle where we live; the powers that be don't care and they don't pick it up. When our bins get full we take them to the containers at the Chamber of Commerce Annex, about ten miles away. Ten miles isn't a big deal, but you have to want to do it.

A few weeks ago we suffered along with the rest of the country in triple digit temperatures and all three of our Saturday night gigs were outside. One of our clients had resisted all our efforts to convince them of the benefits of PLA and bamboo. "No," they said, "we want those clear plastic plates like they have at Sam's."

A little after nine pm my partner and I were sitting at our big kitchen table going over the Saturday schedule. He with a beer, me with a couple of fingers of scotch.

"It's going to be rough tomorrow," he said.

"Well, we've got a bunch of low-cal Gatorade and the five gallon water thermoses."

"And you've also got all that plastic."

"So?"

"You're going to bring it back to recycle, right?"

Oh my God, oh my God, we'll be like dishrags by the end of the night, like cooked spaghetti. We'll be dreaming of the kitchen a/c. We'll be hating the venue, the client, the weather gods, each other. And now I have to recycle. That's what I was thinking. "Yeah, sure."

"I'll take it up to the Chamber," he said.

"You will?" So all I had to do was get approximately 200 9" plates and 450 6" plates back to the kitchen and he'd take it from there. My hero, he was my hero, the wind beneath my ... whatever.

"It's sorta the whole money where your mouth is thing, Kim."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. "No, yeah, you're right."

So we did and he did and we all felt a little noble.

There's still no money in the kitty.