Curbside Recycling: We can do better

By Mark Forsythe The Kansas City Post Yesterday I threw away a glass bottle. I'm sure a large percentage of Kansas Citians do this every day without a second thought but to an ardent recycler like myself it borders on the sacrilegious. The combination of $4/gallon gasoline and the loss of the midtown recycling center has made it a losing proposition to haul a few pounds of glass all the way out to 95th and Hillcrest. I'm reasonably certain it's a net carbon loss to burn that much fuel and emit that much pollution from my tailpipe to recycle a couple of pounds of glass. It seems we've come a long way only to fall back a few steps. Years ago a KC resident could contract individually with Deffenbaugh to have their recycling picked up curbside. They accepted paper, plastic and glass. Soon city leaders decided this should be a free service to all residents. Admirable in intent, but poor in implementation. Citing "hazard" and "insurance purposes" glass was excluded from the City's curbside pickup. Of course nobody seemed to notice that it was still Deffenbaugh doing the pickups. One day, glass was acceptable, the next it was a hazard too dangerous to handle by the very same employees? What about the hazard of that glass now lying broken and hidden within a trash bag ready to puncture the bag and an unfortunate sanitation worker's skin? I have some personal experience with this just hauling trash bags to the curb. Fortunately I decided not to sue myself for negligence. With everybody piling on the green bandwagon, now would seem a good time to revisit our recycling policies. Attempting to ban plastic water bottles City Hall is a nice gesture, but it falls far short of any meaningful progress. Having a councilperson come to my homes association board meeting and tell us about the evils of plastic bottles while she drank from a plastic bottle she had just purchased didn't do much in the way of inspiring people to a good cause. Something needs to be done to let those of us concerned with the environment to recycle our glass easily. Be it through City Hall, or a private contractor that I would pay for on my own. It seems the prevailing attitude regarding new ideas is "we can't." Frankly I've grown tired of the "we can't" crowd. Unfortunately that crowd still runs this town. I think it's time we stop reinforcing everything "we can't" do and start concentrating on what we "can" do.