Each week after “The Right Thing” column has run its course in the publications that subscribe to it, it gets posted on a blog as www.jeffreyseglin.com. The blog doesn’t go all the way back to the first column that ran in September 1998, but it does go back pretty far, to January 2006.
Occasionally, I take a look at the analytics to see which columns have received the most hits over the years. For a long time, the most-viewed column was one that ran 19 years ago exploring the question of if it was OK to allow others to rummage through your recycling bins for bottles or cans that can be returned for a deposit.
That column was recently surpassed by a January 2016column that asked the question of whether it was OK to accept a job offer by a name caller. Still, recycling remains at the top of the most-viewed columns over the past couple of decades.
The rights and wrongs of neighborhood recycling continues to be a recurring concern for readers judging from a recent email.
A reader we’re calling Elke describes herself as a regular estate and garage sale frequenter. During the early days of the pandemic, Elke was able to keep up with her shopping predilection by availing herself of online estate sale sites that enabled buyers to bid online and then pick up an item from the dealer handing the sale at a safe distance rather than in a crowded house of other shoppers.
Elke has started to attend in-person estate sales again, but she still keeps an eye on the sites for things she might like. After viewing a recent sale, she emailed me.
“It is OK to sell one of those large recycling bins issued by a town?” she asked.
Since it is possible to buy large blue bins on wheels on your own, I asked Elke if she was sure the container was town-issued and not something that might have been purchased at a nearby hardware store.
Elke confirmed that the container had the name and seal of the town on it, as well as words that made clear it was issued as part of the municipality’s recycling program.
In some city neighborhoods where recycling bins might get mixed up after recycling is picked up, it seems fair for residents to put house numbers on the bins. When they don’t, I’m confident that bins occasionally get exchanged from house to house.
But unlike trash cans a resident purchased and has every right to sell or take with them if they move, the town-issued recycling bins should stay with the house to which they were issued.
Why the dealer allowed the recycling bin to be listed on the website for sale is baffling and wrong.
If the family selling the items asked to have the bin listed, the right thing would have been for the dealer to point out why it was inappropriate. Now, the right thing is for the dealer to take that listing down.
As for neighbors looking through recycling bins for returnables, I still believe it’s OK to give them permission to do so. The returnables are yours, even if the bin they’re placed in is not.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin
(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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