In Brooklyn, my garbage bin was a catch-all for everything after use, a crumbled package with potato chip crumbles or an egg carton with a dozen cracked and empty eggshells. After moving to Portugal, I’ve encountered widespread state initiatives to promote recycling and they mean business. There are commercial-sized recycling bins in the same combination of green, blue, and yellow every 100 meters in our town. Then there is a separate bin for organic material, so eggshells get separated from the carton. Some cartons are lined in plastic and those went in the bin with the plastics.
I’d never looked so closely at my waste. Throwing away garbage was something I did on autopilot. Even so, I considered myself a decent person who recycled bottles, cans, and cardboard as best as I could, but now I was face to face with a monster. The majority of my waste in my new Portuguese house was plastic packaging—-packaging I’d been throwing out willy nilly for years.
While there isn’t a punitive measure in place to punish or fine citizens who don’t recycle, the persistent confrontation with these bins every few yards and in contrast to the pastel-colored Portuguese environment was like a siren. I experienced this as certain trouble coming if I didn’t comply. The pressure to recycle in a fishing village was more than a public utility, my own health was on the line.
“Sesimbra is Fish”. This is a slogan found all over the fishing village where I live and it is heard as commonly as “New York, the city that never sleeps”, or “Paris, the city of lights”. Sesimbra is a town that relies on one of the world’s cleanest fishing ports. Artisanal fishing techniques have developed in the village over time and characterize the area with a crystal clear port and sublimely tasty fish.
The inorganic waste contributing to toxic runoff is a lethal challenge for the fishing port had to contend with. Generations of fishing families have sustained themselves and the local community from this industry, so there is a necessity to keep the adjacent town as sparkling clean as its port. The dock and shoreline, the sand, all the visual structures that appeared to be a barrier between land and sea was a porous illusion. Sesimbra is a sieve strainer, the fisherman and the catch. Sesimbra is Fish. We are what eat.
When dealing with trash there are gross smells, gushy squishy slimes. But worse than that, my dustbin, crawling with inedible plastics could end up coming back to back me and on my dinner plate. So recycle we did and we recycled hard.