Dallas Recycling: The Time has Come
Recycling rates in many western cities are at 30 & 40%. In Dallas the rate
is a pathetic 2%. The question to ask
is why recycling
rates in cities like San Diego are so much higher
than ours.
Recycling requires an equal commitment from citizens as well as the city.
From the citizen perspective, recycling requires – hold on to your gimme
caps – a change in the way you think about the riveting topic of trash. Obviously
with all the Hummers and oversized SUVs hurtling around Dallas there's not
a popular desire to be efficient or to tread lightly on the planet.
Recycling becomes a part of life. One develops an awareness that ours
is not a world of infinite resources. The plastic you remove from your favorite
new purchase is basically with us forever. Simply throwing things away
may be expedient, but it is not responsible.
The
change in thinking is this: unless you recycle, when you consume you pollute.
The city (in good faith) has made small, initial efforts that are mostly ineffective. They
admit their communication and public education efforts have been poor. You
can't just say "recycling is good."
Recycling needs to be encouraged by the way it is implemented. But the
current system actually discourages recycling.
The blue bag solution is counter - productive. And making people search
out the bags and then pay for them? No wonder our recycling
rate is an embarrassing 2% versus 45% in San Diego. Further, asking people
to separate things is unworkable. Keep it simple. Do the separation
on the other end. Let us just put the nasty stuff in the trash and the rest
in the recyclable container.
When I lived in Los Angeles County they made it simple. They also made
it a mandate. Once a week pickup with a limit of one container. Any more
and you were fined.
More importantly, another container was provided for recyclables. It
was larger than the trash container. Once you get in the habit
of separating your trash you find that, hey, most of this stuff is reusable. I
found 60-70% of what I used to think was trash to be recyclable.
Dallas is known for its selfish culture, its resistance to change. But
this is one area where we can prove to ourselves that we are capable of looking
beyond the boundaries of our own homes and apartments, and beyond the regionalism
that restricts our thinking.
Recycling and sustainability are ideas whose time has come for Dallas, finally.
Posted by Dean Terry at May 27, 2004 02:30 PM| TrackBack
Dean
As the first citizen in Dallas to conduct a major public recycling program -- in 1992 at the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas -- I discovered firsthand that recycling is only a feel-good fantasy, if we are not willing to purchase products made from those commodities we attempt to recycle.
We can place all the recyclable items our little hearts desire, into those recycle bins, and, unless and until we buy goods made of recycled materials, they will continue going to landfills and waste-to-energy incinerators. Unfortunately, we hear of recycling and recovery programs all over the U.S., but, what we don't hear, is the amount of these materials that still end up going into the waste stream.
Like most others, you want to see recycling have ecological value. The only way to have that happen is to create economic value. That value is created when the collected recyclable items once again become usable commodities.
Unfortunately, none of us, nor our GDP (Gross Domestic Product) or GNP (Gross National Product), account for the costs of continued use of virgin-material goods. Once we begin to tally the costs of energy-consumption in the conventional manufacture of non-recycled goods, the associated effleunt and emissions, the resulting respiratory ailments, and the continued costs of keeping our water drinkable, we may see the value in purchasing items made of recovered and recycled materials.
Someday, even Dallas will "get it".
