|
If
you read the Cincinnati Enquirer,
you have seen the letters from
residents angry because they are
required to pay to recycle. For
most of us that have curbside
recycling, the cities negotiate
the cost of it, along with regular
trash. Both get combined into one
line item on our tax bill. We have
been paying for recycling all
along without thinking much about
it.
Should
we be paying for recycling since
our waste collector sells the
recyclables to other companies?
What is the cost of recycling to
the waste collector? It requires
more equipment, gas, personnel,
etc. What is the cost to society
if we don’t recycle? Landfill
space fills up faster, meaning
that more landfills are needed.
The need for additional land at
higher costs would be passed on to
us as a consumer. If we don’t
recycle, we are also using more
natural resources, meaning less
supply and more demand, resulting
in higher costs for products that
use these resources, like
flooring, cabinets, gas, cars,
etc.
Maybe
if we did a better job of
recycling, it would be more cost
effective to recycle. How many
people read the do’s and
don’ts of recycling? Are we
recycling everything that we can?
As I walk along the sidewalks
during recycling day, I still see
items going into the trash that
can be recycled or reused, items
going into the recycling bin that
are not recyclable, and items that
are strangely absent.
Cardboard
box recycling is an area where we
definitely have room for
improvement. The lack of cardboard
box recycling is very obvious,
because most people don’t break
them down to put them into the
trash. Instead they sit on top of
garbage cans or beside them
visible to everyone.
Why
should we recycle cardboard boxes?
If we recycle them instead of
sending them to the landfill, it
saves valuable natural resources,
in addition to saving energy,
emissions, water and landfill
space. Recycling one
ton of box paper saves 17 trees,
uses 4100 KW hrs. less electricity
and 7,000 gallons less water. It
also saves 3 cubic yards of
landfill space. It does take a few
minutes to break down a box into a
3’ x 3’ size, but how do you
compare a few minutes of your time
to saving valuable resources?
Recycling
plastics is still a very manual
process. At the recycling plant,
employees work a conveyor belt
pulling out plastic items that are
not recyclable. Just because an
item is plastic doesn’t mean
that it is recyclable. Plastic
items marked 1 and 2 on the bottom
are currently the only plastic
items recyclable, while numbers 3
– 7 are not.
This means that most yogurt
cups and margarine tubs do not go
in the recycling bins. Plastic
bags are also not recyclable at
curbside. If you want to recycle
bags, take them to Kroger’s or
Walmart’s.
Many
of us would like to see all
plastics recycled, but until we do
a better job on the ones that can
be recycled, we can’t expect the
plastic recycling program to
expand. I was told by a Northern
Kentucky Solid Waste employee that
a plastic recycling company in
Northern Kentucky has to import #1
and #2 plastic from
Canada
and
Mexico
to make their product. This is
because the
US
sends more than 80% of water
bottles and other plastic bottles
to the landfill versus recycling
them. As you can see this is a
valuable waste of landfill space
and resources.
There
was a letter to the editor in this
week’s Enquirer that was very
interesting. Evidently in the city
where the writer was from
residents had to pay $2 for every
bag of garbage they placed at the
curb, but recycling was free. If
that was the case here, would we
see better recycling? Probably,
but I still have hope that people
will weigh the environmental costs
of not recycling and decide that
the benefits far outweigh the
personal costs. Then maybe
everybody will do a better job of
recycling.
Sharon
Tepe is the founder of Go Green.
If you would like more
information, contact
Sharon
at sharon.tepe@fuse.net
|
