My Christmas wish would be to have Iola officials hop on board the recycling wagon to prevent our Allen County Landfill from filling up with recyclable materials.
As a business that handles voluminous amounts of paper, the cessation of Rotary’s recycling program hits the Register hard. Here at the office we have a strapping machine that bundles discarded papers into 10-pound bales. On average, we took 15 bundles a week to the recycling center. I could relax knowing Allen County crews would then transport the paper to Wellsville to be converted into insulation.
As of last Saturday, that’s no longer the case.
THURSDAY’S paper reported that in 2020, the landfill accepted about 12,600 tons of garbage from Allen County citizens and businesses and another 108,000 tons from a 15-county area. Mitch Garner, Allen County public works director, predicted the landfill could last another 100 years.
The point is not whether our local landfill has the capacity to accommodate the extra waste, but that we could be prolonging its life by not adding undue refuse that can be re-purposed. Clearly a win-win.
I understand Rotary’s decision to give up the program. There were too few members willing to dedicate the necessary hours for the program not to be a burden.
For some, they take that as an omen that recycling’s future here is doomed.
I beg to differ.
I’ve visited with many who would gladly participate if curbside service were provided, such as is done in Coffey County. Heck, some have even said they’d pay an additional fee for the service.
Even better, because the recycling program has been so successful all these years, there’s already an established buy-in from a large swath of the public to keep it going.
For 26 years, an entire generation, people from across Allen County and beyond have come to depend on the recycling program.
Sometimes the 250-gallon bins were overflowing with bottles and cans, milk jugs and cartons.
The hard work — getting the public behind the effort — is largely done. In fact, the recycling program was done so well that we now have come to expect it.
Thanks, Rotary, for leading the way.
