I'm not saying you have to be carbon-neutral...

We can't all be the Gore's. But I am really angered by people that don't recycle.

Case in point. My neighbors - a family of five that hauls their overflowing trash bins to the curb every week, launching renegade cheese wrappers onto lawns throughout the neighborhood.

Again, I am no environmental martyr - my obsessive fear of bugs sends me running to the phone to call the exterminator each Spring - but I do buy environmentally-friendly cleaning products, shut off lights in rooms that are not occupied, use the air conditioner only when the air is as thick and soupy as beef stew and find the time to put paper in one bin and glass and plastic in another. It's not hard.

I was actually giddy when I read in my local paper months ago that there would be a fine imposed to anyone found guilty of NOT recycling, but then I remembered that the garbage men, who are extremely friendly and indulge my vehicle-obsessed toddler by giving him a wave every Friday morning, graciously collected and quietly disposed of all of our unsold yard sale items (some which I'm guessing were prohibited curbside) this spring. They are not going to rat out anyone stuffing Coke bottles into a trash bag.

But seriously, recycling is the freakin' easiest thing you can do. I'm not sure if one family of five is going to clear landfills or hault global warming, but how can someone care so little about the environment that they would purposely send plastic to slowly breakdown in the ground?

If the Mayor will hire me, perhaps I can secretly drive around the city, toddler in tow, and get footage of all the people that don't recycle. They can call me Special Under Cover Environmental Investigator for the City. Of course, I might be spotted by someone from the Mother's Club, deemed a vagrant and be banned from the annual cocktail party held on the sprawling front lawn overlooking the Merrimack River. And THAT would be unacceptable.