As one who has conscientiously separated his recyclables and deposited them in public recycling bins consistently, I have to share my disgust with previous letter to editor writers regarding the discontinuation of such facilities by local municipalities.
It’s a short-sighted and counterproductive move.
When I raised the issue with our reeve, I was told it was a cost-cutting measure. The company that did the pick-ups deposited them in their own landfill and billed us for that?
Sundre was first a couple of years ago. They couldn’t be bothered to properly police the bins, located in a remote part of town.
Olds never seemed to have a similar problem. One site by the Westview Co-op, the others, better located and with video surveillance, never seemed to have this problem.
Playing the game, I took my stuff directly to the Didsbury site to find not only are the separation bins gone, but now I have to pay to dispose of everything and it goes right into the landfill bin?
Let’s be honest here. When it comes right down to it, we’ve been sold a bill of goods in regard to recycling, much like some of the other policies inflicted upon us. But then, governments wouldn’t lie to us, would they?
For decades now, we’ve been told that the mountains of waste created by our materialistic society were raw materials for reuse and there was, or would be, a market created for them; we’re gonna save the world.
Granted, some of that came about, but recycling the vast majority wasn’t economically viable, so we shipped it to Third World countries and passed the problem on to them. Would that be environmental colonialism?
Several years ago, they caught on to the scam and started returning the goods, which brings us to today.
Waste disposal is an essential service. In order for it to be effective and for people to comply, it has to be relatively easy and affordable.
Furthermore, encouraging people to bring their recyclables to a central location significantly decreases the amount that has to be picked up by residential pick-up services.
We’ve come away from that and it’s not being helped by our living habits, that create a lot of unnecessary junk.
Plastic bags may be on the way out, whoopee doo, but we still fill those “reusable” bags with an abundance of over-packaged disposable items. That needs to change.
Hans Ullmann,
Mountain View County
