Published: January 08, 2008 08:28 pm            

Stephanie Salter: The few, the tough, the green — Terre Haute looking for 500 recyclers

TERRE HAUTE — If you are among the folks who want to whiz all over the new plan for curbside recycling in Terre Haute, nothing I can say likely will deflect all your yeah-buts.

If, however, you are among the realists who know that our city is a generation behind in helping its residents do the right thing by waste, the time has come to put up or shut up.

As part of a new contract for garbage removal with Republic Services Inc., Terre Haute will include curbside residential recycling for $5.50 per month. Special, 65-gallon lidded bins that do not require separation of plastics, glass, aluminum, newspapers, et al, are part of the deal.

No, I do not like taxpayers being locked into a 20-year contract with Florida-based Republic or anyone else. And, yes, I think it’s a shame that people should have to pay extra to be responsible stewards of the Earth.

In my next lifetime — or if I move to a city like Bloomington or wait for Terre Haute to hire a different waste disposal company and mull over public recycling for another 20 or 30 years — it will be different.

Until then, I consider fewer than two dimes a day an acceptable price to enable me to lessen the non-degradable landfill load.

I am betting that folks in at least 499 other Hautean households will feel the same.

Five hundred is the magic number of subscribers necessary for Republic to deign to implement curbside recycling. This is what I meant by put up or shut up.

Joy Sacopulos, who probably knows as much about recycling as anyone in the Midwest, said it best: “If we don’t make a go of it now, we’ll never have it. I won’t see curbside recycling in my lifetime.”

Sacopulos and her buddies from the recycling scene as well as Trees Inc. stand ready to work with and help city residents, Republic execs and Mayor Bennett and his staff by sharing all they have learned over the decades about recycling.

They know a ton — about the fluid markets for used newsprint, food cans, corrugated cardboard, green glass versus clear, about who takes computer components, large appliances with freon in them and discarded building materials.

Like me, these green-leaning people believe charity for Mother Earth starts at home. We dutifully pull out and put aside every piece of recyclable material we encounter. When our homemade bins, baskets, bags and car trunks are full, we haul the contents to one of the area’s recycling centers.

Because Indiana State University’s center on North Ninth Street is open seven days a week and takes glass (green, brown and clear) as well as plastics numbered 1 through 7, it is my destination of choice. Hell Week for me is between Christmas and the New Year when ISU’s recycling center is closed.

Why do we “go to all that trouble”?

Because we know that recycling is one of the easiest and most direct ways ordinary citizens can positively affect our environment.

This isn’t a theory or even open to intelligent debate. The developed world, in general, and the United States, in particular, are among the most wasteful assemblages of people ever to inhabit the planet. The stuff we throw into non-degradable garbage bags to be hauled off and bulldozed into ever-expanding oceans of indestructible landfill is nothing short of sinful.

Especially because so much of the stuff could be reworked or reconstituted to use again.

Once you start looking at the world this way, you’ll do almost anything not to throw away tin or aluminum cans, glass, any kind of paper, cardboard or most plastics. You watch other people blithely toss pizza boxes or — Lord, help us — brand new but empty water bottles into one-size-fits all trash receptacles, and you want to scream.

I watched this a few weeks ago while I was in the food court in ISU’s student union building. I’d gone searching for the proper recycling bins for my post-lunch paper and cardboard only to find nothing but regular trash cans.

How could the place with the best recycling center in the county not have mandatory, campuswide recycling?

Turns out it’s not due to any lack of desire on the part of the people who run ISU’s recycling center. They set up shop nearly 18 years ago, initially to save the university time, labor and money from having to make so many trips to the dump.

Now, according to Paul Reed, who directs myriad ISU services, including recycling, some 980 tons of recyclables are handled each year by the center. Most of it comes only from the academic buildings on campus. (Dorms don’t recycle, either.) Perhaps one-quarter of the total comes from people like me who use the drive-through facility.

In an interview earlier this week, I learned a lot more from Reed about what is being done, what can be done and how a successful citywide curbside recycling program might affect ISU’s center. (It won’t put them out of business.) Sunday, I’ll share some of that and talk about a few of the yeah-buts raised by nay-sayers.

Like Sacopulos, Reed is one of those people Mayor Bennett, Republic and the rest of us need to lean on and learn from to help Terre Haute make up for lost time and kick butt with our curbside recycling program. Bill Tennis, the director at Goodwill, home of another fine recycling center, is an additional expert.

Despite recent population declines, there are more than 22,000 households within the city limits. Five hundred is 2.2 percent of those households. With minimal effort, we can double that. Throw in a little neighborhood competition, and the possibilities are enough to turn Terre Haute a gorgeous, environmentally friendly green.



Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.





Recycle time

• This weekend offers a chance to clear out all cyber things broken, antiquated and otherwise unwanted. Santa’s Super Saturday E-Scrap will be recycling computers, printers, ink cartridges, surge protector strips, orphaned mouse cables — anything electronic and ready for dumping.

• Sponsored by three non-profits, Indiana State University’s Recycling Center, Trees Inc. and the Indiana RecycleForce, the scrap gathering runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in the university parking lot at Ninth and Chestnut streets in Terre Haute.

        

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