was in my bedroom, writing, when I heard a knock at the door. A knock? The cat and I looked at each other like a bomb had just exploded. What the hell was going on? People don’t just drop by South Williamsburg, and if they do, they use the outside buzzer. I shrugged. “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I told the cat, and he returned to his prior activities. I believe it was shedding.

Later, when I left to meet some friends, I stepped into the hallway to find, laid at my doorstep, a familiar bag of trash with a note attached. “Sarah,” it began, in script as polite as any schoolteacher’s. “Please recycle as per instructions. Thanks—the management.”

I was insulted. I was pissed. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to explain.

My father is an engineer with the EPA who has been passionate about the environment long before Leonardo diCaprio and Cameron Diaz ever took up the cause. Back in the greedy 80s, when Leo and Cammie were busy trashing their neighbors’ lawn with empty Budweiser cans, my father was driving our recyclables to a bin near some bowling alley. It was all so horribly embarrassing. Until the 90s, when it became fashionable again, and I loved him for it. But the point is that I recycle. I am very much a Recycler—how dare my landlord accuse me otherwise. Also, she had gone through my trash. Which is really, really weird.

“Sometimes management gets super-stingy after they’ve been fined by the city for not recycling,” my friends explained when I met them at the restaurant. Fair enough. But what were my transgressions? From what I could recall, the controversy stopped at one item-- a large paper bag from the Container Store, which I had used to dispose of kitty litter. I wasn’t going to recycle that shit. And I speak quite literally.

Two days later, when I finally cooled down, I grabbed the recycling instructions kindly left (once again) in my mailbox and sorted through my returned trash. What I found amazed me. It was a veritable grab bag of NYC recyclables – aluminum to-go boxes, a detergent carton, empty cans of cat food. Here I’d thought I was playing the model citizen, but all I knew to recycle was the obvious stuff: Coke cans, wine bottles, newspapers I hadn’t actually read. Sheesh. New Yorkers are hard-core about their recycling, man. And I dig that about them.

These days, I feel like I’m studying for an exam each time I reach for the trash. Egg cartons: recycleable? (Answer: Yes.) Plastic bags: recycleable? (Answer: No.) Now, if I could just stop stealing my neighbors’ wireless internet, I’d be the model citizen. Hurry up, Time Warner, I’ve got ethics to keep already.