I am amazed at the local attitude towards recycling. Someone missed the boat a long time ago and the rest of the city is suffering.
First of all, recycling truly should be a free service. I cannot imagine why anyone would pay for this service since there are local places that PAY the consumer for their used cans. That is the way it should be and the local companies that provide this service should be rewarded. How should they be rewarded? Maybe the city can provide the FREE recycling drop-off area that was mentioned in this article. However, plastics cannot be recycled ANYWHERE in Utah County. Trust me, I have tried! This might be going out on a limb but it could be possible that the money earned by cashing-in the metals locally would provide enough capital to ship the plastics where they can be recycled. If not, it can at least lessen the cost.
Secondly, it really makes it hard to justify a recycling program because it is so cheap to use a landfill when there?s that much room, shocks me. Here?s the math. There are still 70 years left in the landfill if the city continues not recycling. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 40% of our trash is paper (recyclable), 8.5% is metal (recyclable), 8% is plastic (recyclable), and 7% is glass (also recyclable). That adds up to about 60%, considering ALL of the waste might not be recyclable. Thus we see that if a recycling program is established, then the landfill will still be used by 40% of the waste and will be around far longer than 70 years. The question remains: In 70 years, what is the city going to do? Provo needs to look a little farther ahead!
Lastly, people need to be educated. Public Service Announcements, whether written or posted, need to be created to encourage recycling and to inform citizens of its benefits. Citizens have to know why they should recycle. Recycling is apparently a new concept for this city and therefore will a little time before it is totally accepted. However it should not be ignored and passed off because it did not work before.
John Stephen Winston
Downers Grove, Ill.