Recycling is an idea the UAE is just now getting serious about.

Even now, nearly nothing is recycled. Not even the items that could be fairly easily separated out, or that have some value. Like aluminum cans. Newspapers.

Here in Abu Dhabi, they have distributed new, rolling trash cans in several neighborhood, with the idea of residents separating basic trash from recyclable items.

Pretty sure it isn’t really working out, for one really basic reason:

The trash cans have only English-language words on them.

The black can is for general trash. The green is for recyclables. I know this because I read the instructions. In English.

What is happening, in practice, is that most of the people who live in our apartment complex make no distinction between green and black trash cans. They dump general trash in both of them.

I don’t believe it represents a rejection of the concept. But it does indicate that most of the people in the complex do not read English — which I can vouch for; I am not sure I’ve ever heard a neighbor speaking English.

So, I go outside with a stack of newspapers and a couple of dozen aluminum cans, and I flip up the lid on the green, recycle can … and it reeks of garbage.

This came off the tracks in two ways:

1. The lack of other languages on the trash cans.

2. The failure to deliver to every resident the refrigerator magnets the company produced.

The magnets are impressive. They come in black and green, like the cans, and have the same shape, and if you look at them, they show full cans with the proper stuff in them. The green can is nearly overflowing with two-liter plastic bottles and paper. The black is brimming has non-recyclable stuff.

Those magnets, however, were never distributed.

So, we have recycle containers filled with just regular trash. It’s slowing down the recycle efforts pretty dramatically.

We also have the impression that the UAE doesn’t actually have a recycling facility in operation, and some cynics believe that all trash goes to the same place, just as it always has.

Some bugs to work out.