Shrinking Moon For You
A Jesuit professor once explained the notion of Hell to me by telling me to imagine running my hand through the flame of a candle….and feeling that sensation for all of eternity. That is exactly the place I would expect to end up if I littered in Telluride, Colorado.
The town takes its trash very seriously and the people of Telluride have gone to great measures to make sure that visitors properly dispose of their waste. Large metal trash receptacles are fixed to the ground at the beginning and end of each block; lids are secured with bear-proof keyless locks that can only be opened by humans.
To guarantee that waste does not co-mingle with the recyclables, there are several brightly displayed recycling stations throughout the town as well. At the Jazz Festival last weekend, there was a person whose sole purpose was to tell patrons whether to place discarded items in compost, recycle, or trash.
A community’s waste patterns can be reflected in the residents. The people manning the recycling centers were constantly smiling, happy to guide you toward making the right disposal decision. The rules against littering are not so much heavily enforced, but encouraged. And the people who live in Telluride seem to be living evidence of hygiene, quite literally sparkling from fresh air, gondola lifts, and the knowledge that they will never end up in a Jesuit’s version of Hell.
