I’ll admit it. I throw away stuff that could be recycled. Actually, I throw away lots of stuff that could be recycled. I do it because I’m lazy and cheap.
Whew! It feels good to get that off my chest.
I suspect that there are many, many other people like me who simply find it more convenient and significantly less expensive to toss glass, paper and metal into the trash than to get it to a recycling center. This came to the forefront of my little brain a few weeks ago when I opened a letter from Waste Management which said in part,
Due to the low amount of customer participation in regards to our curbside recycling program, and with the rising cost of doing business, we have found it no longer feasible to provide weekly recycling service.
Beginning August 1st, 2005:
The scheduled pick up of your curbside recyclables will be changed to every other week…. Your monthly rates will be unaffected….
Your friends at Waste Management of St. Louis, West.
Fine!, I angrily figured. Now I get to pay the same amount for the joy of keeping twice as much junk in my garage, waiting for the truck to get around to picking it up. Worse, if I miscount the weeks and miss a recycling pick-up, I will have to keep four weeks worth of stuff around. It was the last straw. I asked Candy to call Waste Management and cancel our recycling service. The receptionist glumly asked her, “Is this because of the letter we sent out?” At least I’m not alone it choosing to fill up the local landfill.
I assuaged my conscience by buying a larger plastic tub for recycling paper. I can haul that over to the local elementary school and dump it in a big, yellow bin. They take it all, from newsprint to cardboard. Kudos to the Francis Howell School District for making this service available to the public.
It still bothers me, though. I’d love to recycle. I just need a way to do it conveniently. Or throwing something away needs to be a bigger pain in the ass than recycling. In a nutshell, I need incentive!
I came up with this idea: What if the cost of throwing things away was increased and the monies used to subsidize the cost of recycling? What if it cost twice as much to throw away a pound of glass as to recycle it? What if my current $60 trash bill jumped to $120, unless I jumped on the recycling bandwagon?
So how about it, Waste Management? Why not jiggle your rate structure around. Fix it so the cost to my family will stay roughly the same as long as we recycle but jump higher if we choose not to. Subsidize my ecology-mindedness with the slovenly habits of your other customers. Eventually, enough of us will get a clue and recycle. There will not be enough trashers to support us recyclers so maybe the economics will stop working. On the other hand, maybe by then you will not need as many trash trucks on the road and will save some money on that end of the business.
Gentle readers: What do you think? Leave your comments here and share this essay with your friends.
