The kitchen windows are steamed up from canning, the countertops covered with tidy jars of tomatoes. The deluge is under control, for now.

The table is piled with empty glass jars we had saved for future use. They are all that remains of the capers, pickles, fruit juice, jams, and sundry other commercial products we buy from the grocery, the kind of odd glassware every household accumulates. Cabinets overflowing, we finally made the inevitable decision to toss the collection into the garbage, which is to say we have consigned it to the local landfill, that collective midden we are all building.

It occurs to me that recycling is a comforting lie we tell ourselves. Like the greasy hamburger with fries we eat today while promising ourselves a healthier diet tomorrow, it’s a lie that allows us to perpetually defer the inconvenient truth. It’s a lie that allows us to paint our collective lack of will into a vivid palette colored in virtue and redden our backs with self-congratulatory patting, while accomplishing nothing.

There is really no effective glass recycling effort on this planet, and plastic recycling is the joke whose telling lasts a billion years. Should we recycle? Absolutely. (Although reuse might be the better option.) But, of course, the problem lies much deeper than in recycling.

“I don’t buy books; I read only on my computer.” “In my city of eight million, I don’t have a car. I always take mass transit.” “I plant basil for my local pollinators … can my own tomatoes … grow my own corn.” Well, not to squelch enthusiasm for any of these valiant efforts, but they are all piles of greasy comfort lies that weigh heavy on the promise of a better future.

We simply can’t recycle away the debris of our modern lives. It is an endless stream that we are incapable of seeing from start to finish. We stand on the banks and toss our rubbish into the river, wipe our hands on our shirts, and say, satisfied, “Well, that’s that sorted.” And as we turn to go, we glance dismissively at the neighbor who tosses his refuse on the bank.

We can’t single-stream recycle the burgeoning waste of our consumer civilization or dumpster our way to a healthy planet. Ours is a deluge that cannot be controlled. We are the lie we tell.

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Reading this weekend: A new work by David Kline: The Round of a Country Year, a farmer’s day book. Kline is a man who comes closer than most to not telling the lie.