You just have to give your head a shake

Here in the province of Saskatchewan, they have a great recycling program where almost all empty drink containers have a deposit on them. Juice boxes, all bottles and cans... virtually any kind of drink container. This way, none of it is tossed out the window of a car, and what is tossed out the window is soon picked up by someone who collects them for the deposit money.

Of course we collect a lot of those containers here at the park, and many people who camp here "donate" their recycling for the park to be able to collect the deposit.

So every Wednesday when Ruth goes in to town, we load up the little blue car with as much as possible. I even take out the back seat so that we can stuff it right full!

Well last Wednesday, Ruth took off in to Swift Current to the local SARCAN depot where they count your load and pay you your refund.

She had a variety of materials with her... but mostly pop and beer cans, and liquor and wine bottles.

They got through counting the cans, and were about half way through the bottles when the operation abruptly came to a halt.

There was a dead mouse in one of the bottles!

Okay, so the rules state that the bottles and cans have to be relatively clean, and obviously they were... until that one mouse chose an empty bottle as his final resting place. We have a lot of mice around the park and obviously the bottles up in the work shop might sit around for a week or two before being loaded into the car. It's honestly surprising that it doesn't happen more often.

Anyhow, the counting came to a stop, and they brought out the disinfectant and began wiping down their work surfaces. Ruth was told that they were unable to accept the rest of the load and that she would have to sterilize them in order to bring them back next time. But what had been accepted and counted was fine.

Huh? All because of a dead mouse?

Ruth didn't understand the logic. I'm not sure that the lady telling her this information understood the logic either, but she's just following the rules that some bureaucrat made up.

So Ruth gets back to the park and tells me the story. Obviously I don't understand the logic either. Sure... hand back that one bottle with the mouse in it... or better yet, just simply toss it in the trash. But why would you have to stop counting? Why would the next 100 bottles present more of a hazard than the previous 250 bottles? And aren't we just going to bring those same bottles back next week? How would they possible know which ones were sent back and which ones are new?

You just have to give your head a shake.

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