Eco Alley
Living Green with Connie Pumphrey
Garbage Out Of Place
Recycling isn’t a new idea – it’s been around forever. Ancient cultures that made metal products melted down broken items to make new ones. People who lived through the depression save(d) and re-use(d) because they remember what it was like to have their buying power shut down. During World Wars I & II, everything was saved and collected for the soldiers and the war effort. Then the landfill came along, trash drop-off and curbside collection efforts were ramped up, and it became cheap and easy to discard our trash.
Lady Bird Johnson has been credited with re-energizing the recycling effort in the 1960s through her beautification campaign - her ‘garbage out of place’ initiative. Bottles and cans strewn along roads and in parks infuriated her so companies paid those who collected them. My brother made extra money at it for years. (Mrs. Johnson didn’t like overhead power lines either).
Anne Arundel County recently released its recycling stats and we are doing OK but there is definitely room for improvement. The County wants us to recycle 50% of our trash and our ‘15 Area’ average is 38%. The most successful area recycles 51% of its trash and the least successful area recycles 28%. The breakout is as follows: 1 area is 51%; 5 areas are 40% or more; 8 areas are 30% or more and 1 area is 28%.
The County makes recycling easy and there really is no excuse why we can’t toss stuff in a yellow bin instead of a green one. We don’t need to separate paper, plaster and glass - just bundle plastic bags. At my house, about 75% of our trash is recycled because it has become second nature to us – giving a few seconds thought to EVERY piece of trash we put into a container.
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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/10/10 at 04:14 PM
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