Hey, this is Henry Grubar. What next is on vacation and they asked me to pick a favorite episode for an

encore. I liked the one that I recorded in April about the global crisis and recycling. I was

thinking about it recently because I was in Jackson, Mississippi, which just decided to end its

curbside recycling program. The recycling crisis is ongoing and this episode I think still functions

as a good explainer of what's going on. Now here's the show.

It must be just torture for you to be in public spaces. I mean, when you're in an airport and you're

sitting next to a recycling bin, it drives me crazy. This is Melissa Johnson. I always describe our

solid waste recycling waste reduction family as an incestuous group of individuals passionate

about garbage. Melissa spends a lot of time thinking about recycling and garbage. It's her job,

it's her life. She's the president of the associated recyclers of Wisconsin. She's the director

of solid waste disposal in Marathon County, 100 miles north of Madison. Her email sign-off is in

Latin. Nama Dipsa, CNT-A-Potesta S. Knowledge is power, especially when you share it with random

people at the airport. You can ask my granddaughter about the conversation I have with strangers

about recycling right? She's like, no grandma, not not again. Yeah, not again. Well, here we go again.

How did you come to be someone who, as you say, loved garbage? Well, that's a good story. I

actually, I was waiting for it to get it. At the Atlanta airport, Melissa got to talking to two

women from Beirut about what she does for a living. When it was my turn, I mentioned that my job is

to manage waste material. And the one woman looked at me and she grabbed my arm and she just pleaded

with me. She goes, we need someone like you to come to Lebanon to help us with our garbage problem.

And I looked at her and I said, well, surely you have other, you know, more important things in Lebanon

to deal with. And she looked at me and she said, no, you don't realize that affects people's lives

every day. She goes, yours is a noble profession. That must have been so gratifying.

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