Last week a couple of senior-highschool-looking kids walked boldly on to my porch and took the bottles and cans from my recycling bin. They returned them to a minivan piloted by a soccer-dad looking dad. They were not perturbed when I came out on the porch and watched them leaving. Today a homeless guy (at least he claimed to be homeless) knocked on the door and asked if he could do the same. And tried to sell me a colour TV. Apparently it works good.

My household manages to get the recycling to the curb about one week out of two. So having the porch cleared of the tin and glass weekly is a service to me. And I’m enough of a capatilist to assume that if these folks are taking my waste somewhere that is willing to pay them for it, then that somewhere is presumably more reliably going to in turn move it somewhere productive. So this is all fine with me. Bring on the binners. If Ann Arbor’s economy is supporting this degree of specialization, maybe it means it is really a city.