Dear editor,
I have noticed with keen interest two Register articles in the last couple of weeks about the problem at the landfill with blowing trash.
Friday’s pictures were especially interesting because most of the problem seems to be plastic bags. They are quite pesky and I’ve been around long enough to remember having to answer this question when at a checkout line, “Paper or plastic?”
The question now is how do we solve the problem. One answer suggested is quite pricey, or at least to me. One million dollars is a lot of money to throw at a problem. The other solution also came at a steep price, pulling other county crews from needed jobs just to be plastic bag wranglers! Who knows what the compound cost of that work is, i.e. time plus wages to do that job plus time plus wages lost in doing what they are hired to do for the county.
There is a solution that would cost nothing, would eliminate the problem, would extend the life of the landfill even longer than current projections, and would benefit everyone. It’s a solution that has been around for a very long time and has even been practiced in Allen County and all our communities. In fact it’s being practiced even as we speak.
What is this amazing low-cost, doable, seemingly magic solution? Recycling. Yep, we need to practice the 3 Rs of reduce, reuse, and recycle. Every bit of the problem blowing about the county landfill is totally reusable, reducible, and recyclable.
What would it cost the county and all our communities to say that the landfill would not accept any material that could be recycled? Nothing. The next question is what would it cost to start encouraging everyone to recycle, and that is a good question.
Right now I do not think the county or our communities are doing much at all to encourage recycling. In fact Iola dissuades recycling by picking up trash twice a week for an incredibly low cost.
I’ve never lived anyplace where trash was picked up twice a week and I lived one place where we opted for every other week trash pickup and it still cost twice as much as trash service costs in Iola! This means that Iola already has on hand and in place the time and people to provide pickup recycling services.
What is needed is a way to process the recyclables picked up. For that solution we only need to look as far as the old chicken processing plant on the east side of Iola. An incredible small crew of people are struggling to offer recycling in the county. We can also look to Coffey County and Burlington where county-wide curbside recycling is offered.
To be sure this would take a coordinated effort between the county and individual communities to make it happen, something of a sticky proposition of late here.
Or the county could just keep throwing money away. A million dollars a pop to put up huge fences, poles, and nets, and also spending millions of dollars each time a new cell is opened at the landfill — a practice that I’d wager would have to happen more and more frequently as long as we chose not to do what would help our county and communities the most.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It’s the right and smart thing to do.
Dan Davis,
Iola, Kan.
