How do you recycle a snake?

Hint: Not like this!!!

Portland's brand new newspaper, The Portland Daily Sun (which is doing a great job so far), printed this great story yesterday, much to my delight.

Goodness snakes!
Portland Daily Sun, page 1
Saturday, April 4, 2009

People try to recycle the darndest things.

“Evidently someone thought a dead 7-foot python could be recycled, because we got one a couple of weeks ago," said ecomaine General Manager Kevin Roche. "I guess I could understand if it had been thrown out with the trash, but in recycling? No.”

The single-sort recycling facility operates with state-of-the-art technology and equipment that rapidly sorts all combined materials into separate categories. Roche explained that “Newspapers, cardboard, No. 1 plastics, aluminum cans, steel cans, glass bottles and other types of material are each identified automatically, pulled out from the rest, and, then, baled.” There was no identification equipment for snakes.

Recycling Manager John Morin said, “The snake was found as the pre-sort conveyor belt was moving it along to the newspaper separator. Luckily it was grabbed just before it would have wrapped around the spinning shafts of the separator.”

Morin said another recycling blunder this year was a 125-pound anchor with a ten-foot chain. “The anchor was metal, but nothing bigger than a breadbox is going to fit through this equipment,” said Morin. He clarified that people with larger recyclable items may bring them to ecomaine to place items in a designated holding area, at no charge, or take to their local transfer station. “It’s also important,” he added, “that people not put trash or food in with recyclable items.” Or snakes.

[Source]