7-minute read time.
Everyone experiences climate anxiety differently.
According to Cornell Health, climate anxiety, also known as eco-anxiety, is the feeling of stress about the effects of climate change on the environment, human health, and ecosystems. With climate anxiety comes a range of symptoms, including intrusive thoughts; feelings of grief, loss, anger, sadness, and guilt; jitteriness; nervousness; increased heart rate; shallow breathing; difficulty concentrating; changes in appetite; and insomnia (1).
Although I am not sure I would classify my mother as someone who experiences the range of symptoms that come with it, my mother definitely cares about the environment, perhaps more than she should.
Because of years of untreated OCD, hoarding disorder, and the unhelpful aid of her childhood environment, my mother has some peculiar habits when it comes to her personal choices of, quote-unquote, “saving the Earth.”
The average person will denominate two separate baskets for their waste, maybe three. One is for plastic recycling. One for paper recycling. One for trash. Maybe, if the person lives in a city with specific requirements for their trash and recycling, they will have more. The average person might reuse a plastic takeout container once or twice. They might not take long showers or, if particularly environmentally conscious, not flush the toilet after urinating, waiting for the next person to use it to flush. I have been to many greener public spaces where a sign above the toilet says, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”
My mother’s brain works differently, though. She handles every single item that leaves her home with the utmost care and precision. Her recycling and trash disposable habits are unique but disruptive.
For example, her paper recycling has to be perfect. Each piece of paper she intends to throw away must go through a rigorous checklist before it can be tossed. Step 1: Look at the paper. Examine it. Make sure that it is not one that she needs. It cannot be recycled if it has important information, such as a phone number, finances, or something she wants to read later. If the piece of paper passes step 1, it’s on to step 2. Step 2: She looks through the paper again. You thought the verification step was over? Nope. Step 3: She flattens the paper. No crinkles, no folds, as flat as possible. Step 4: She rips the paper into as many pieces as she can. These pieces are small, no larger than the palm of her hand. Especially if the paper has essential information on it, like if it’s a piece of junk mail with our address, it’s of the utmost importance that the paper is torn up so whoever meets it next will not have our information. Step 5: She places the torn pieces into the bottom of the paper bag she uses to take out the recycling. She ensures it fits nicely into the bag, lined up neatly and flatly at the bottom. If she feels that something has gone wrong during the verification process, she will dump out the recycling or trash vessel and restart. Sometimes, the recycling never makes it out of the home.
She does this for plastic and metal recycling, as well as trash. If not reusable (and my mother loves holding onto containers to reuse them), the plastic and metal recycling has to be crushed under her feet. Old milk jugs have to have the top removed before she steps onto it, as if crushing grapes to make wine, making sure it is as flat as possible before it goes into the reused cat litter bucket that she considers a recycling bin. Metal cans are crushed the same way, sometimes with her bare feet, which always left me worried that she would tear a hole in her skin with the sharp pieces of metal. Trash, although not ripped up, has to be placed nicely into the trash bin. She touches things like used tissues, pads, and old food with her naked hands. Every item that is meant to be discarded has to be touched, has to be examined, has to be verified.
If she is outside the home and the place she is in does not have the correct bin, she will take the piece of recycling that she used home and dispose of it the proper way. If she sees a piece of recycling on the floor that’s not hers, she will pick it up and put it in her pocket for later. I have had to beg her to leave trash on the sidewalk, embarrassed because people around must wonder why she is picking up a piece of trash.
I trace her unusual recycling habits mostly to her father and her OCD. I had the opportunity to live with my grandpa during the height of the pandemic when I was virtually working on my undergraduate education. Like my mother, he is almost obsessive about his recycling, ensuring every piece of recycling that leaves the house is rinsed and placed in the correct bin. His trash is brought out in brown paper bags as well. He reuses containers whenever possible. He has enough money to get fancy Tupperware containers but prefers to reuse ones once filled with potato and chicken salad. However, his habits make more sense – because he lives in a city with a prized recycling center, one that he told me Obama once visited, he has to sort his items to match the areas of the disposal center. I don’t know what the trash and recycling situation was like for my mother growing up in his home. Still, I recognize similarities in their processes, making it evident that my mother adopted some of his behaviors, spinning them into unhealthy practices.
The OCD part is my mother’s need to start again if something feels wrong. The cycling, the spiraling, the compulsion to do it right. It’s perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive disorder smushed into one.
I wonder if she thinks she is saving the Earth, if she thinks she is making a difference. Her efforts, although valorous, contribute to the mess and hoard even more. And since they take so much time, things tend to build up. Trash and recycling litter the house until she has the time and energy to take care of it. It doesn’t help that she brings more trash and recycling inside as well.
I wish I could see inside her brain and understand her habits from her perspective because, for me, throwing something out is as simple as putting it into the trash can. Because of her habits, I find it hard to want to recycle in the first place. If the place where I live or am in has a recycling bin available, I will recycle. But if it doesn’t, I won’t. I don’t go out of my way to recycle. Does this make me a bad person? I recognize that my own attempts to save the planet are noble but are nothing compared to the disaster that the oil and fossil fuel industries are doing. Me deciding to throw a plastic bottle into the recycling rather than the trash will not fix the hole in the ozone layer, but it won’t hurt the planet either. Maybe it would prevent a turtle from chewing on it. Little things do matter, but I won’t be like my mother.
References:
- https://health.cornell.edu/resources/health-topics/climate-change
