Well, that was an unpleasant surprise this morning.

I went to my neighborhood grocery store at the corner of South 45th Avenue and Bell Street in Amarillo to (1) buy some food for our household and (2) dump some newspapers and other paper into the recycling Dumpsters I thought were lined up along the Bell Street side of the parking lot.

I got there and they were gone. Gone! All of them!

I inquired inside the store and was told that the city solid waste department pulled the Dumpsters out. Apparently not everyone in Amarillo thought of the Dumpsters as being used specifically for material to be recycled. They were throwing regular old trash into them.

The city got fed up with having to sort the throwaway trash from the recyclables, the store management staffer said, so it yanked the bins.

Count me as a dedicated recycler. I seek to recycle anything I can whenever I am able and wherever the community sets aside bins to take the material intended for recycling. This was a terrible blow to my desire to protect the planet from waste material that can be reused.

At this moment — I’m still recovering from the shock of the disappearing Dumpsters — I am unsure what I’m going to do. I’ll likely call one of my many acquaintances at City Hall to inquire as to whether the city has eliminated its recycling program altogether. I hope that is not the case.

As for the nimrods who have ruined who’ve abused the recycling program and ruined the sense of “giving back” that recycling gives to the rest of us — you know who you are — you should be ashamed of yourselves.