The Compost Argument

"It's one bin." "It's one bin in a city of a million bins." "Right, so it's a million bins." "No, it's one bin, mine, and the other 999,999 are doing whatever they're doing regardless of what I do with a banana peel." This is Greg. We've been married nineteen years. He's a good man. He's a civil engineer, which I think is where the trouble starts, because he thinks in tonnes and I think in banana peels. "Okay," I said. "What do you want to do instead?" "Nothing. That's the point. I want to not perform a ritual that makes us feel better and changes nothing, and put the effort into the things that do." "Such as." "Voting. Insulation. The furnace." "We did the furnace." "We did the furnace. That was worth ten thousand green bins. You didn't post about the furnace." Which, fair. I did post about the green bin. There was a photo. Our neighbour Anita commented with a little seedling emoji. Here's the thing about the compost argument: it is never about the compost. It's about whether you're allowed to feel like you're doing something. Greg's position, which he'd deny is his position, is that feeling like you're doing something is dangerous because it lets you stop. My position is that if you can't feel like you're doing anything, you stop anyway, only sadder. "You know what the bin actually does?" I said. "It gets me to look at what we throw away. Every day. I see it. Half a loaf. The coriander I bought for one recipe. It's a mirror. It doesn't matter if the city composts it or burns it or fires it into the sun, I looked at it." He didn't say anything for a bit. He was doing the dishes, and he does them very thoroughly when he's thinking. "So it's a religion." "It's a habit. Same as flossing." "Flossing does something." "So does this." "Quantify it." "I can't. You know I can't. That's your whole trick, you ask me for a number and I don't have one and you win." He turned the tap off. "I'm not trying to win."

"You are a bit." "Okay, I'm a bit trying to win." We left it there, which is how we always leave it, because at some point somebody has to go and put the kids' hockey stuff in the dryer and there's no truce like logistics. But then, and this is why I'm writing it down, the next morning I came into the kitchen and he'd put the coriander that had gone slimy in the back of the fridge into the green bin. Not the garbage. The green bin. And he was standing there with his coffee looking at it, and he said, "That's the third bunch this year." "I know." "We should stop buying coriander." "We should." He put the lid down. "It's still one bin." "It's still one bin." Nineteen years. I'll take it.