Can I Recycle My Soapbox When I'm Done?

photography by - e http://www.erineppenbaugh.tumblr.com

Like most people, I have a lot of pet peeves.  I hate watching the smoker in the car in front of me throw their cigarette out the window.   I lose my mind when a police officer drives by me 20 miles over the speed limit with no lights or sirens on.  And I am so thankful that I will not have to see the Huskers lose yet another game to Texas.  But when I see someone's trash at the curb, overflowing with garbage bags and other junk, and no recycling bin- well, then you have officially sent me over the edge.  And not just for the reasons you might think.

I think most people would consider recycling a liberal, tree hugging, koombya issue for hippies to worry about.  And certainly those types will gravitate towards recycling and doing what they can to reduce, reuse, and recycle trash items.  But thanks to the city of Omaha's recycling program- and similar programs nationwide I'm sure- even if you don't care one bit about what is going on with the earth, don't care about things like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and believe our energy policy should be "drill, baby, drill," then I'm here to tell you that recycling is most assuredly a conservative issue as much as it is a liberal issue.

Impossible?  Not at all.  At this time, the city of Omaha pays $14 million a year (link) for garbage collection- this includes yard waste, trash, and recycling pickup.  This averages out to about $8.74 per household per month, which sounds pretty reasonable to me.  This cost is taken from the City's General Revenue fund- i.e. the property and sales taxes that we all pay. 

So what does this have to do with recycling?  Well, last year, according to the Wasteline newsletter that the city sends out every month, the city was able to sell the recycling products picked up at the curb for over $650,000 while saving $360,000 in landfill "tipping" fees.  So by recycling, right now we are putting back nearly 1/14th of our trash budget into the city coffers.  This is not insignificant, especially in these times of budget shortfalls  Unfortunately, it also equals out to about $1.50 per person.  We could probably do better taking our cans down to one of those Golden Goat recycling deals setup in various parking lots.   

So the problem is participation, or lack thereof.  Data isn't available, but I would personally estimate that about 60% of households in the neighborhoods that I have lived in do not recycle.  Data shows that nationwide, 80% of households recycle, but I would venture that on an average week, most of the recyclable items in half of those homes are going into the regular trash.  So with a little more effort at the homes that do recycle, and a lot more effort from the ones that don't, we could easily push that number to $2 million saved, or 1/7 of the garbage budget.  I grant that many people live in apartments, and thus city recycling isn't available to them, but I still think that Omaha citizens could easily push that number up. 

photography by - e http://www.erineppenbaugh.tumblr.com

I can say that personally, this week when I took our household trash down to the curb, we had one bag of trash from a three-person household and a full recycling bin worth of stuff.  We had reduced our total trash to one bag thanks to following aggressive recycling habits as well as using reusable containers.  (My wife and I also bring home recycling from our respective jobs, so I am not including this in our total.  We had two additional bins filled, but I realize that most people are not going to be as dedicated as we are.)  We're not getting our $8.74 worth a month I guess but someone has to chip in for the guy that puts out 16 bags of grass clippings every week.