We should recycle like it’s WW11.

This week I heard our CFO say our trash hauling fees are going up. I assume our fees for recyclables are going up as well. With land fills closing every year there's no denying there's little space left in our country to put our trash. The best we can hope for in reducing our costs is to eliminate bulk items from the household trash that could be recycled.

From time to time, ever notice the number of large couches and recliners there are around Town waiting to be picked up by our diligent DPW workers? Some of these behemoth sized hernia makers are very heavy and are loaded into a DPW packer and carted away to the nearest transfer station along with household trash. Most of these pieces of furniture have various amounts of steel in them, some as much as 50 pounds or more of steel that we pay for in tipping fees to get rid of. As the costs of trash removal are always rising, increasing our overall recycling would decrease our trash removal costs. Recycling should be more of a priority among our city leaders, residents and businesses. It’s painfully clear that many residents don’t know what to recycle or how to recycle it. Just look at the recycle bins on trash days around your neighborhood. You’ll see bags of household trash, metal, large pieces of plastic items, hanging plants, etc, etc in the recycle carts all of which don’t belong there. Eventually every City and Town will be forced to mine the recyclables to reduce the tipping fees for trash removal. We should also consider that we are losing rare earth metals, precious metals and valuable recyclables to other countries who then sell us items that they recovered from our recyclables. And as the sanctions against Russia are widening, we will not be able to buy any of the minerals mined there for some time it appears. Many of these minerals are used in battery manufacturing for electric cars.