By MELISSA MOODY
Melissa.Moody@newsandtribune.com
April 22, 2008 10:03 am
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Foreboding environmental warnings are occurring across the globe with increasing regularity. Global warming, landfills laden with waste, natural disasters, oil spills, polluted waterways, polluted air, polluted soil.
The ever-increasing call from scientists, politicians and environmental groups is to reduce the degree humans are impacting the planet. If there was ever a need to recycle, they say, the time is now.
The United States recycles more than 32 percent of its waste, at a rate that has doubled in the last 15 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Only one curbside recycling program existed in the country 20 years ago, and by 2006, more than 8,000 curbside recycling services were operating across the U.S.
“I’ve got three school-age kids and they’re all learning about recycling,” said Mike Moore, a Clark County Commissioner. “I see how important it is, my kids see how important it is, but I don’t think everybody in Clark County sees how important it is.
“What is it going to do for our county five years from now or 50 years from now?”
Clark County stopped curbside recycling service to residents outside municipalities in 2006. And last year alone — not counting the six months the county went without curbside recycling in 2006 — more than 2 million pounds of recyclable material was placed in the Clark-Floyd Landfill, equal to about 360 Ford F-150 pick-up trucks.
“It’s in black and white in front of us — 2 million pounds have gone into the landfill since June of 2007 to now,” Moore said. “I do think if anybody in this county wants to recycle, they ought to have the opportunity.”
The county’s Solid Waste District mandatory curbside recycling program expanded to include all of the approximately 32,000 county residents in 1999, and that year the program diverted more than 5 million tons of recyclable material from the landfill.
The lack of curbside recycling for residents in unincorporated parts of Clark County in 2007 put the materials diverted from the landfill below the totals when the program began in 1994.
“It’s the lowest tonnage level diverted in 14 years,” said Sharon Marra, executive director of the solid waste district. “For us, it means there is a lot of confusion out there. We need to get people signed into the voluntary program to give them something.”
Moore and Marra developed a plan in February to offer voluntary curbside recycling to residents not already in the mandatory program in Jeffersonville, Clarksville, Sellersburg and Borden. To be feasible, 4,000 residents need to sign up for the roughly $44 a year program. So far, only 1,000 people have expressed interest, and the solid waste district must have the remaining 75 percent to offer curbside recycling to anyone interested in the voluntary program.
“A few years back, recycling was a very divisive subject,” Moore said. “If you were within five or six miles of the Jeffersonville city boundary, it was a very hot topic to recycle. But when you get out in rural areas, people were less wanting to be forced to recycle.”
Moore’s solution to that problem is the voluntary curbside recycling program.
“Forcing people to pay the recycling bill doesn’t take that waste out of the landfill,” he said. “I think my plan offers them an option.”
Mailing mix-ups at the district’s office and annexation issues around Jeffersonville slowed the process to inform residents about the program considerably. The mailers informing residents around the county of the potential for voluntary curbside recycling went out a month later than expected.
Some residents already receiving mandatory recycling got a mailer for the voluntary program, while residents not receiving any curbside recycling received bills for the mandatory program.
“I think we’re going to have to do another mailer,” Moore said. “If we’re serious about offering it, it needs to be done again.
“The U.S. is only a couple hundred years old and we’ve already got problems with where we put our waste.”
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