Another New Year's Resolution, in ruins

It's been a hard slog, this resolution to recycle. I set up the house using a big, reusable shopping bag under the sink for cans and bottles, another in the living area for newspapers.

Several weeks ago I embarked on the first journey, with a fairly "unsupportive" friend helping (and by that I mean he acted slightly embarrassed), to dump them at the Spinney's depot. The next week I had borrowed a friend's car for errands, so recycling was a piece of cake.

The next two weeks lovely and thorough cleaning woman Zara threw out the recycling altogether. Ooops. So this week I rushed to get it to the Spinney's depot before she came, instead of calling her for fear of sounding like a spoiled expat who could never afford a weekly cleaner back home admonishing her cleaner not to throw out the stuff she threw out. As I walked toward the taxi stand, the cans-and-bottles bag clanking and even worse, dripping, the newspaper one a heavy drag on my right arm, I though about just how arduous this particular New Year's resolution was turning out to be.

I pulled the bags into the back seat of the taxi with me, the driver already wrinkling his nose. In a confined space, I have to say, that week's collection smelled a bit gamey. You might wonder why I didn't put the recycling in the truck of the taxi and my answer to that question is, that's what I did the last time I took a taxi, only to open the trunk and find it scattered everywhere.

Anyway, I meandered to Spinney's last night with a displeased taxi driver possessing the world's worst sense of direction – it took us 10 minutes just to get in the parking lot. By the time the driver had managed to manouever us to the dead-end front of Khalidiya Police Station, I had grown quite agitated, due to his overzealous use of the brake and because I was running quite late for the 8.30 showing of Avatar – not to mention when we sailed past the place where the depot was supposed to be it seemed to me that it wasn't there.

Sure enough, by the time we squeaked back there, I could see that it was gone. So there I was, with a cab full of recycling, 10 minutes from a movie date with a friend, and a vanished recycling depot.

If you can come up with a better solution than I did for that predicament – which was throwing everything in the dumpster, bags and all, and heading to the flick – you are a better person than I. (And I wouldn't mind hearing it).

Anyway, the depot is gone and I don't know where. Clues, hints, ideas – and other options – are all encouraged.