|
Info Introduction To most people, the faces of shopping cart recyclers are silent; they are only a flash of an image, often a mistaken image. Many think "homeless", without knowing whether the recycler actually does have a home. Some are homeless and some are not. Some have other jobs and some do not. Some are on welfare and some are not. Some are women and some are men. Portrayed by the local media and neighborhood associations as "poachers", "shadowy figures" and "can pirates", shopping cart recyclers are a culturally diverse hard-working group of people, who happen to be continuously cleaning the streets of San Francisco by picking up aluminum cans, bottles and other recyclable materials and turning them in for their California Redemption value. the Shopping Cart Recycler The shopping cart is a familiar object, however, it is not something that most stop to ponder. One never consciously uses the same shopping cart twice. They all seem to blend together in the common psyche. The shopping cart's sphere is traditionally limited to the grounds of a supermarket. It roams the aisles of the stores gaining weight, and then weaves its way through the parking lot to empty its load into a car. The shopping cart was invented according to my family by my grandmother's brother-in-law, Myer Marcus, an East Coast supermarket executive. Officially it was invented by Sylvan Goldman. As the local neighborhood stores have given way to the tyranny of the megastores, shopping carts have flourished. They come in plastic and metal, large and small, and in various colors. At the moment of selection and purchase, the shopping cart is what the modern consumer clutches, a familiar aid in this time of decision, a tool for buying goods and spending money. The shopping cart is the symbol of the American consumer society. On the periphery of all this is the non-traditional function and location of the shopping carts: recycling in the street. Due to their proximity to the street, a few shopping carts jump out of the store-to-parking-lot loop, and are made to survive on the street. Shopping cart recyclers roam the streets, day and night, collect cans and bottles in their carts and redeem them for cash at various recycling centers throughout the city of San Francisco. They collect them wherever they can find them, on the street, in garbage cans, behind homes, outside of and in conjunction with bars and restaurants. The street shopping cart shifts from being the vehicle for consumers to being a multi-tiered utilitarian vehicle for those who live and/or work in the street. It replaces the home and the car and performs dual roles as storage container and transporter. Because it is in the hands of lower income people in the streets, the shopping cart is symbolically equated with general unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. The community seems not to be aware of the real purpose of the majority of shopping carts that exist in the streets. For those who have fallen through the cracks, it provides a means to survive in this society's capitalistic extreme. Americans throw away more things that they buy in stores than any other people in the world. Most of what they throw away is the packaging containing these items. The packaging, designed for storage and advertisement, becomes useless once the item has been consumed. Packagings are sent out to pasture in landfills and other garbage sites, forgotten, useless, and polluting. A few packagings, however, are often recycled and reused. This is because they have been deemed to have monetary value. Of all containers and packagings, only aluminum cans, steel beverage cans, glass bottles which formerly contained gaseous beverages such as beer or Coca-Cola (but not beverages like Snapple), and plastic 2-liter bottles are worth between 2 and 5 cents an item (click here for current rates - Snapple bottles now included). The relatively tiny value of these empty containers has not mobilized the vast majority of the community to return them for their redemption value. The shopping cart recycler does see the value of these containers. Her entrepreneurial drive is remarkable. No job application, no dress code, no education is required. The shopping cart recycler is a self-sufficient, independent worker, working outside the traditional workplace. Production Notes running time - 16 minutes, 16mm, color. |
|