Redneck Sustainability: Urban Scrappers

scrap metalWhen I say “urban scrapper,” I’m not talking about some underground Sunday night fight club for hipsters with too much kempt up frustration, I’m talking about today’s savvy, entrepreneurial recycler of society’s droppings.

This duty has increasingly been taken up by the growing and noble urban class of redneck–the urban scrapper. And the rest of us, who wince or even shudder with disgust at the idea of getting intimate with the undoing of our daily cast-off (Cast-off: (n.) the dreck that ripples outward in the wake of a typical modern life on a daily basis) owe the scrapper a profound debt of gratitude.

You see, while I’m sustainability conscientious, like most of us, I’m dastardly lazy. I know that the complex items within my cast-off can be broken down into more basic elements and surrendered to the proper depositories. In return for said deconstruction and depositing I can even earn a bit of scratch. But dang it. My drill is put away, and besides the battery probably needs to be charged.

Not to mention I’d probably get rust water on my clean clothes. So I’d have to go upstairs and change into my work clothes just for this? The agony! Who can save me from the woeful tale of modern apathy? The noble urban scrapper. Sure, he wears coveralls without a shirt… or underwear. But scrapping is a hot and dusty job.

Some people may see these urban recyclistas as barnacles clinging to the municipal underbelly of waste management. But those are the same people who believe in doggy heaven and nonfat ice cream. The reality is that scrappers provide a desperately needed service in urban sustainability. If a city has enough scrappers constantly scouring and cherry-picking its spoilt piles of cast-off it creates a phenomena known as a “free-market economy.”[divider]

Some will call me a “crackpot” or a “libertarian,” but by golly, I raise my wrench to the hard-working scrapper cruising the block in a ’78 Bonneville with a dryer in the trunk. And I think I’ll continue to set my garbage out a day early, thank you very much. I might even leave a little mint on the lid to the toilet tank.

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