When I was became aware of recycling, it was at the end of World War
II. We separated tin and iron. We separated glass by colors. We wrapped
food scraps separately for the pig farms. Newspapers and magazine went in
separate bundles. We used some of the paper in the coal furnace. We left
the glass milk bottles on the stoop for the milk man. We reused the cloth
bags from flour and other bulk foods. There was no plastic. In 47 or 48
they stopped taking food scraps. The Health Department said the pork was
full of trichinosis from uncooked garbage. By 52 they stopped recycling
and residential coal burning in most cities. Recycling reminded people of
the war. Coal burning brought fond memories of clean air.
Today we have new wars of liberation of resources for private
capital development. We are willing to spend billions of taxpayer dollars
and some blood to make sure that multinational corporations can
efficiently and profitably move oil to Asian, European, and North
American markets. Yet some of us gripe when Minneapolis tries to recover
some of the wealth we throw away. Should we just raise taxes instead and
give the materials to a favored company to make all the profit?
In Minneapolis, we have a limited return to recycling. Over a decade
ago, the Plastics folks established a simple Arabic number code to
identify plastics to make profitable recycling possible. 1-PETE, 2-HDPE,
and 6-Styrofoam are the most common materials for household products.
They also have the best recycling potential. Although most languages of
the world use Arabic numbers in everyday commerce, in Minneapolis we do
not separate plastics. Apparently someone has decided that English
speaking Minneapolitans and other Minnesotans are unable to either read
the Arabic numbers or have an insufficient attention span to put the
materials into separate bags.
How can we send people to Mars when we can't put a Plastic 2-HDPE in
a 2-HDPE labelled bag? Will we err and send them to Alpha Centari? How
can we afford to send people to Mars when we insist on burying millions
of dollars of resources in landfills or burning them at power plants?
I do not think that Minneapolitans or Suburbanites are too ignorant
or too lazy to increase separation of recycling for pick up. It would be
helpful if manufacturers made fewer choices to recycle so that the whole
process was more efficient and profitable. They are beginning to recycle
autos in Europe.
I also have no problem with Minneapolis recovering more than the cost
of recycling, especially if that will avoid higher taxes.
Thanks.
John O'Neal
Holland
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