We're almost there...

We needed some paper to provide our customers with some wrapping for a sale that had lots of fragile items...  What better place to get newspaper than at the recycle center.  When I pulled up I had to wait in line.  A steady stream of cars were filing in to drop off recyclables.  This is heartening.  Considering we live in a world where nobody seems to want to go to any effort to do something that that won't directly benefit them right now, it is nice to see that folks are taking the time to separate recyclables and actually using their own gasoline to haul them to the recycling center.  (It's stupid that we don't have widespread curbside recycling here...absolutely stupid.)

On the other hand, I regularly watch folks pitching recyclables into the trash when there is a bin that says "Bottles Only" or "Aluminum Cans Only" sitting right beside it.  Somehow recycling on a small scale throughout the day doesn't seem to register for many quite yet.  We're doing better, but statistically, when it comes to recycling we lag behind most first world nations by a considerable margin. 

As a family of three, we recycle everything we possibly can.  We even pay a company to collect our recyclables since they actually accept more types of plastics than the recycling center does.  Between that and our dedication to composting everything organic, we only generate enough trash to fill one white tall kitchen bag in a  week.   Our trash service comes once a week and we often take a month or more to fill the bin with trash while our neighbor's bins overflow every week.

Recycling isn't hard, especially when you've built it into your life.  It is normal for any of us in our home to quickly inspect, without thinking about it, any item before it ends up in the trash.  A surprising number of products and packaging materials have recycling symbols on them.  We just need to take the time to look.  The trash bin should be the receptacle of last resort when all other possibilities for recycling have been exhausted.

With only a few exceptions, our government has not been a role model for recycling activity.  A few well proven programs would dramatically improve our scores when it comes to keeping usable materials out of the landfill.

1. A national bottle bill with no exemptions for certain types of beverages.  If it can be recycled, it should be included.  Several states currently have a working bottle bill and there's no question that it gets results.  What better way to encourage recycling than to attach dollars to it.  When I was in college in upstate New York, there were recycling machines on campus that dispensed a nickel for each empty aluminum can we fed it.  Since NY had a 5 cent deposit on bottles and cans, we often accumulated plenty of drinking and pizza money by cleaning up the campus.  I remember walking into the College Union with a green trash bag slung over my shoulder and walking out with two pockets bulging with nickels from the machines.  This was in the 80's and nearly a quarter century later, it seems we've made little progress.

2. Mandatory recycling.  This is a reverse incentive.  Failing to recycle gets you slapped with a fine.  Now there's a revenue generator for cash-strapped municipalities.  In NJ, everything recyclable goes into one bin.  It is then separated at the recycling facility.  Talk about making it easy.  The facility created jobs and can sell the materials.  Where's the downside?

3. Packaging requirements.  Sure, the big corporations will whine about it but they need to get over the whole idea that they can contribute to the wasting of our resources and the polluting of our planet.  Packages would need to be either fully recyclable (at today's standards), or completely biodegradable.  With the technology we have, that shouldn't be very hard.  A better idea would be to make sure EVERYTHING we can buy can be recycled somehow.  Nice, but what are the chances of that?

Even three decades ago this was a no-brainer... more so now.  I don't understand why the rest of the developed world can do this really well and we can't.

We can do this well...if we really want to.