Even the most grandiose plans can often end up as garbage

Musically minded folk may recall a strange but oddly addictive little ditty released almost 40 years ago by The Vapors called Turning Japanese.

Well, these days the city might suggest using it as the official song for those running Calgary’s current recycling facility in a last-ditch attempt to save the ongoing blue box fiasco from going up in flames.

Because, when it comes to recycling, there’s no place quite like Japan. Heck, on a recent trip to Tokyo I was told the reason locals are aghast at thoughts of mass immigration is that such ignorant newcomers routinely ignore the 20 or so different recycling containers neatly stacked outside Japanese homes.

As example of such thoroughness, one of the most amazing sights from the World Cup in Russia was thousands of Japanese soccer fans that, after their team had just won a match, didn’t simply nip off to the nearest bar to celebrate. No, instead they pulled out big, plastic garbage bags and picked up each scrap of litter they’d previously dropped below their collective seats during the game.

Can you imagine Stamps fans doing this at McMahon at the end of the game? Nope, didn’t think so.

So, unless we mimic that Vapors’ song and find ourselves suddenly turning Japanese, hopes we’ll all comply with the precise instructions on what rubbish to put in what bin look doomed.

And this matters when you’ve plastered big blue, black and green plastic containers across the entire city yet have ultimately ended up with a gigantic fire hazard instead.

That’s because Calgarians keep putting the wrong things in their various bins, so when some naughty items — such as batteries — hit the recycling depot they can and often do cause fires.

Now people are urged to double-check the long list of “what should go where” on the city’s website, but as most of us are lazy at heart the chance of everyone dutifully doing this are as slim as sumo wrestling replacing hockey as Calgary’s favourite sport.

So, of course, this will inevitably lead to more city enforcement, with garbage spies prowling the alleys, tickets in hand, hunting those dreadful human specimens who’ve erred in where they’ve deposited their assorted loose plastics, or some other potentially capital crime. Then, naturally, we will need to hire more bylaw officers to accomplish this crackdown.

This is what happens to grandiose plans once governments get involved. When simply expected to pick up a single bin each week, the city proved equal to the task, just as it usually is in fixing potholes each spring and similar civic responsibilities.

But inevitably politicians get carried away, as they did in approving convoluted plans to capture all our recyclables, many of which were already being deposited in communal bins by citizens at no charge and subsequently sent off to China.

Ah, but now the Chinese don’t want our garbage any more so that plan’s in the dumpster — maybe in future we could just burn what hasn’t already been destroyed in sorting depot fires. (Anyhow, the benefits of shipping Canadian garbage across the Pacific for someone else to look after always seemed a bit dodgy from any environmental or humanistic viewpoint.)

A handful of years ago, when the city started trial runs involving recycling and composting programs, things looked hunky dory. But we’re an optimistic and approval-seeking bunch and thus rarely plan for problems or failures. Yet inevitably they happen. But once launched the egos and sunk costs involved makes turning back almost impossible.

Which is why we should pay even closer attention to that catchy, old Vapors’ tune.

When Tokyo won the right to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, the announced cost of this mammoth event was US$6.6 billion. With two years still to go, that price tag now stands around $12.6 billion, even after severe curtailing of the original plan.

Hey, maybe us Calgarians will turn Japanese after all: in the winter of 2026.