Have you ever wished it were 1957, and we could all just live like Beaver Cleaver's family, completely oblivious to the ecosystem? They were so good at that in 1957. They drove those big gas-guzzling cars that pumped leaded exhaust into the air and bulldozed every forest in North America to build suburbs. Then they just smoked wherever they wanted.

And they did something else we can't do anymore. Something now considered an unspeakable act of horror and disrespect toward our increasingly fragile Earth.

They threw away their garbage.

They just put things like cans and bottles and newspapers right into garbage cans, and let the garbage man take it away in a big truck twice a week. No fuss, no muss. They didn't know where it went and they didn't care. They never even considered rinsing anything, or peeling labels or scrubbing out the peanut butter. Ever. They also didn't have to find enough room in the house to separate the glass from the aluminum, or the No. 1 and No. 2 plastic from the 3 and 4 and No. 5 plastic.

Recycling, shmecycling.

Before everyone pulls out a soy-ink pen and a sheet of unbleached recycled paper and writes me a nasty letter, let me point out I'm all for saving the Earth's resources and not adding to the garbage problem, blah blah blah.

But I'm sick of rinsing the containers. I'm sick of stacking them, sorting them, bagging them and dragging them around. In a nutshell, I'm sick of saving the planet.

And if that weren't enough, someone's always coming up with more. Now we aren't supposed to buy anything made by companies that don't recycle. Or for that matter, companies that test products on animals, oppress any groups of people or pollute anything.

The latest one is to boycott companies that don't espouse feminist values. A new book just came out on that.

This is good in theory, but the problem comes with practical application. Speaking for myself, I can only carry so many field guides listing Earth-friendly companies, family-friendly companies, animal-friendly companies and woman-friendly companies when I go shopping.

I do what I can. In fact, I always make a point to take my recyclables to a center whenever they begin to take up more than three-quarters of the living space in the kitchen. Call me a stickler for orderliness, but I feel it's important to have the option of opening the refrigerator door each and every day, regardless of how often the lack of same gives one an excuse to go out to dinner.

I usually take my recyclables to one of the grocery stores. This way, I figure I can get rid of the old dirty containers and, in the same trip, buy a whole cart full of new ones.

My neighborhood grocery store supposedly takes recyclables, but I'm never sure they really want to. I always bring a cart full of recyclables into the store and begin by asking someone who works there what they'd like me to do with them. This generally results in "The Look.''

"The Look'' is one that indicates the grocery employees have some thoughts on what they'd like me to do with my recyclables, but management would not approve of a verbal expression of them. So what they do instead is tell me about a different procedure each time I approach them.

First they say to take them back near the pharmacy.

The person back there gives me "The Look,'' then tells me to take them across the store to the other corner, where two other employees give me "The Look'' and tell me I should really leave them up front and that someone would take them back for me.

In any case, I must admit I sometimes wonder what goes on with my recyclables behind the black rubber doors in the back of the grocery store. I imagine the employees gleefully chuckling at my perfectly rinsed plastic things as they toss them all into big green Dumpsters where the Cleaver's garbage man collects them all and tosses them in a landfill twice a week.

No muss, no fuss.

E-mail Barbara at bapowell@denver.net

Keep up the great work, Barbara!

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