Editorial: Ada Countians need to up their recycling game
In a sense, Ada County got its first report card for recycling earlier this month. From what we can tell looking at the results of a yearlong, $73,000 study of what is in the landfill, there is plenty of room to improve our grade.
A lot of waste piling up at the Ada County Landfill, and others around Idaho and the nation, didn’t need to end up there. And that could explain why some European countries recycle at nearly double the rate (63 percent of trash is recycled in Austria) of the United States (34.5 percent). But the European Union has a mandate to recycle 50 percent of its trash. We have our individual motivations in a recycling culture that can ebb and flow due to markets for recyclables and other circumstances.
After delving into the topic with the city of Boise, Republic Services and Western Recycling, and mining a report May 1 by the Idaho Statesman’s Cynthia Sewell, we feel most of us could improve our recycling game overnight. That’s because a lot of what got dumped at our landfill during the 2013-2014 study (in the samples) could have been redirected.
Continued recycling education programs, new composting programs such as the one Boise is planning, and maybe even some tweaks in regulations and prices could be incentives to improvement as well.
The cost for a resident to dump trash at a landfill across the country is wide-ranging — anywhere from $40 to over $100 per ton. Spokane is over $100. The Ada County Landfill charges residents only $33 a ton. Would raising the rates in Ada County be an incentive for residents to recycle more? Or would a higher price result in a spike in illegal dumping?
Area waste disposal industry experts we consulted believe that promoting stewardship and recycling education is a better long-term strategy than dispatching recycling police, and we agree.
We know and you know that recycling is just nonpartisan common sense. We also know that some of the restrictions and guidelines can get confusing. So, here are some small but effective adjustments we can all make to raise our recycling grade:
Among the “missed opportunities” noted by our trash experts are these:
Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Statesman’s editorial board. To comment on an editorial or suggest a topic, email editorial@idahostatesman.com.
This story was originally published May 9, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Editorial: Ada Countians need to up their recycling game."