In a video created in honor of Earth Day, the National Security Agency features “Dunk,” a creepy ’70s-era mascot that encourages kids to recycle. In the eight-minute version, Dunk — a recycle bin — brags that “diverting items away from landfills has become a primary goal for NSA employees.” Seems like their “primary goal” should be protecting Americans, but perhaps I’m misinformed.
Dunk also reveals that the nation’s top spy agency “has operated recycling programs for decades” and that the agency recycles 13-14 million pounds of garbage every year. That’s a staggering amount of trash for a federal agency. With an estimated 30,000 employees, that’s around 325 pounds of trash per person.
I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, but all I can picture in my mind is NSA employees spending hours each day shredding government files related to cell-phone snooping and demolishing hard drives and backup tapes containing information that would be damaging to elected officials. I’m sure it’s mostly soda cans and outdated government manuals. But really, why so much trash?
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