Thank you Jane for the introduction! I/O Psychology is nothing to be intimidated with, btw.
Last weekend I went to my high school reunion and there were several things that I found shocking, one of which is that the county I grew up in does not have a recycling program! The first part of the reunion was held in a county park and one of our classmates is now a county commissioner. We chatted some about how he like his job, etc. and as I was leaving I pointed out to him that I had not seen any recycling bins in the county park and he told me that there are no recycling bins in Columbia County! What??? He said that they had tried recycling in the past and it really wasn't fair because very few people used it, but everyone had to pay for it and so they did away with the program. Those who wish to recycle can, however, take their items to a special facility! Apparently this is not a controversial topic on the board, NO ONE wants recycling or would even consider a program! Now I agree that it is wasteful to have trucks roaming the county needlessly if people don't recycle (wasteful environmentally, not economically), but I hardly think doing away with the program is a reasonable alternative -- how about some public service campaigns? The sad part about it is that this county commissioner went to school with us, he's from the generation of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." What happened? Later I asked another LC resident about this and he said "What's really wrong with landfills? Often times they make nice parks on landfills." On a positive note, I had a long conversation with my brother who is an active resident of the same county and found out that he is independently going to speak in front of lots of clubs/organizations to encourage them to switch to more efficient light bulbs, and it appears to be having some effect. (I was pretty impressed, especially since he is a republican.)
On a related point, I agree with the bloggers here that it is important to reduce the number of miles we drive. As such my husband and I have gone from two cars to one and when we leased our new car, we picked the most efficient one we could afford (we couldn't, unfortunately, afford a hybrid). I wish that US cities had better public transportation, but regardless I believe each person must still do their part. No one would argue that Orlando has good public transportation, but when my husband and I moved here, we purposely bought a home near my university. He works for the university and could easily find a higher paying job elsewhere, but part of what keeps him at UCF is the fact that otherwise we would have to buy another car (other reasons include health insurance, retirement benefits, and getting to have lunch with me in case you are interested). I am currently looking for additional work and I have applied to several positions at UCF. I regularly take the bus to school and we car pool on the way home. It takes me 20-30 minutes to get to school on the bus; by car it takes 20 minutes + parking (which can be crazy). Am I lucky that I have a bus that is so convenient? Yes! But it's not all luck; I bought a house on a bus route near school -- that's preparation. I'm not advocating that people pick up and move tomorrow, but driving distance and proximity to the public transportation line are both worth thinking about next time you are moving or changing jobs. Also, on a more selfish note, I save LOTS of money and time having only one car and not being far from work.
Clearly not everyone can do as I have done (maybe homes are too expensive near their jobs, maybe there is literally NO public transit, maybe their jobs are in areas where they would not feel safe living). But the point is that each person should be ACTIVE in taking steps to reduce their negative impact. Each person should make changes where they can.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Growing up in the same town as you, Melissa, I never had any hands-on experience recycling. Now that I know for sure that it's not a program in Columbia County, I actually feel a little bit better, on my parents' behalf, since they don't sort their trash.
Speaking of sorting trash, though, the system in our part of Switzerland last year was pretty darn cool! With a kind of regularity, but not nearly as often as we should have, Sean, our roommate Tavis (a Swiss-American) and I would gather up all the recyclables off the kitchen balcony and head to the ECO-BUS! This was an old bus with an entrance at one end and exit at another, through which you walked with all your recyclables and sorted them into bins. This was no cake-walk, though, because there were about 20(!) categories to sort into, including that perennial favourite, "old corks."
Also, the bus was painted all these psychedelic colours and stuff. And the people who ran it loved to bark orders at Sean. In Swiss German.
Maybe Lake City just needs an eco-bus. With an American flag on it, so we will all know that collecting old corks is patriotic.
I always thought it was amazing that you had to haul your own recyclables downtown and then sort them on your own, down to different colours of glass, and people actually did it. Can you imagine something like this being attempted in North America?
They had recycling bins when I moved to Lake City in 1993, but they were gone pretty quickly after that I remember.
One thing I always wondered was how a small Canadian town of 2000 people could afford recycling when a big rich(er, at least) American town of 15000 people could not. I guess Americans just hate the earth.
PS - Lynx buses are terrible. But I didn't live close to UCF. I lived near Econ and Colonial.
Actually where I lived in Wyoming (of all places) we had a great little recycling shed where everything was sorted into about 5 or 6 different categories, and the amazing thing is that everyone did it. Of course the place I was living in in Wyoming is full of people who tend to spend their free time outside running up mountain faces or riding the rivers or genearlly out and about appreciating the bounty of nature, but still... Wyoming.
In Japan there is a pretty good system for sorting all the different trash and there are generally places to recycle cardboard, milk cartons, papers, glass...etc. But the irony is that "recycling" and sorting here tends to mean that you sort everything out just to be burned in the long run anyways. Also, there have been some recent studies showing that it may actually take more energy to recycle plastic bottles than it actually saves in the long run. At least by the Japanese system. I'm not too familiar with the Amareican system anymore, as I haven't really been keeping up with all things freedom.
Heh... I guess that means Steven won the election! I wonder when Columbia County stopped its recycling program? My mom started recycling when they started the program, and continued up until she moved out in July 2005. I wonder if her recycling bin goods were simply chucked into the garbage truck with the rest of the trash?
Waycross just started a recycling program within the past year - but it's one where you have to drive to a recycling center to drop off your stuff.
Meanwhile, here in Korea... You're supposed to purchase "official" trash bags - and they're expensive. However, recyclables can be put on the curb in any bag (like from the grocery store, etc) - this encourages people to sort out recyclables. I don't know anything about the recycling program here beyond that point though.
Yeah, in Switzerland we had to purchase official garbage bags, too, which encourages people not to trash so much stuff (and, like you pointed out, Jane, to sort their things for recycling). The bags were 7 gallon bags (not very big) and cost about $3 apiece. Pretty pricey!
Glenn -- I live near Colonial and Econ now, so they must have added a new bus line.
Melissa
There was recycling in Lake City at least through September of 2001. I remember hauling my mom's bin the to curb every Wednesday that month before I came to Korea. However when I was in Lake City during the summer of 2004, it was gone. My family had recycled since the beginning of the program, and I know my mother was disappointed to see the it stop. At the same time, she's not willing to drive her recyclables out to some facility on the edge of town. It really is a shame.
Where I grew up in central Florida, we didn't have the fancy-ass curb-side recycling they have now. Once every week or two, my parents would load up the trunk with the collected cans, bottles, and newspapers in the garage and take them down to the closest recycling center. These consisted of large, round bins placed in parking lots around town and painted with faces on them, and it was always fun as a kid to push the bottles through one by one and listen for them to break when they hit the bottom. The bins were labeled for sorting, although they didn't always have each different bin in every location. And the bins weren't emptied until they were full.
What's wrong with this method? If Lake City can't afford curb-side recycling, why not just put bins around town?
Post a Comment