The rules of recycling are mysterious and ever-changing.

In this story, a group of friends decided to make it rain on the recycling rules.

Let’s see if this MC deserves a party.

Confetti it is then

This story happened over a decade ago, when my city was starting up a ‘must use this bin for trash, and a recycle bin will be provided as well’ scheme.

My roommates and I got the notice for this new change over and we were reading the requirements and such, when we all noticed one glaring thing.

All paper products must be loose, and not bagged. This included shreds…

My friends and I discussed this and talked about how dumb it is etc… and then the new phonebooks started showing up.

OK, I agree some rules are meant to be broken, but how’re they gonna MC this?

Cue bright idea…

We then started asking at work, friends, family, neighbors etc. if they had anything they needed to shred and if we could have their phone books (I mean, even at that point, no one used em anyways).

We had literal piles of phone books and papers, envelopes, and anything else paper we could run through our shredders.

Big commitment for little shreds. Something tells me this is gonna blow up.

I think it took a few weeks for us to manage to get through all the phone books we had, and if I remember correctly we killed at least one shredder…

In the end, we had like 4 30 gallon trash bags full of shreds, crosscut confetti-sized shreds.

Which we then lovingly packed into the recycle bin, full to the top, and slightly packed.

Then trash day comes…

Unfortunately I worked nights so I didn’t get to see the dumping of the shreds, but upon waking I knew it was a glorious occasion… shreds everywhere…

For whom, exactly, is this glorious?

I would imagine that we were not the only ones with this bright idea as a few weeks later a notice showed up, stating that the rules had been amended, all shreds were to be bagged in clear plastic trash bags…

OK, well I guess they got the rules to change, but took a lotta work.

Was it worth it?

Let’s see what the comments say.

One person tears this story to shreds.

Someone else calls this MC a waste of time.

Another person says, bad prank.

Another poster is like… there’s a reason for everything?

Another person says, this is just compliance.

Phone home: This MC was a party downer.

But at least the trash men weren’t inconvenienced.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.