Local recyclers create positive trend

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Lincoln’s recycling residents should take a bow.

So many showed up on America Recycles Day on Saturday that organizers couldn’t handle the crowd. The line of cars stretched for five blocks at one drop-off site.

The turnout was boosted by the offer of free document shredding at the special national event sponsored by the National Recycling Coalition. (By way of disclosure one of the organizers was the Journal Star, which operates a curbside recycling service.)

Another indication of interest in recycling is the 300 percent increase in number of televisions turned in to Secure Recyclers in Lincoln during the past three months as consumers chose to upgrade their sets before the conversion to digital broadcasts next year.

For many residents in the Capital City, recycling is something they practice week in and week out. There’s evidence that their numbers and commitment are growing.

In recent years the amount of material collected by the city of Lincoln’s recycling operation has been growing steadily. The city operates regular drop-off sites. Check the city’s Web site at www.lincoln.ne.gov for more locations and other information.

Last year the amount of recyclables, including paper, plastic, glass and aluminum, increased by 5.1 percent. The previous year it went up by 5.9 percent, according to Gene Hanlon, city recycling coordinator.

Currently the city’s recycling operation is diverting more than 7,000 tons a year from the Lincoln landfill.

The space saved in the city landfill by recycling since 1992 has extended the life of the landfill by about five years, Hanlon said. Assuming that recycling continues at its present rate, the landfill will be extended another six years, he said.

Nationally, the amount of waste that is recycled has been increasing about 1 percent to 2 percent annually. Currently about 34 percent of municipal waste is recycled, according to Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Coalition.

“Thus, every can, bottle and newspaper placed in the recycling bin is lowering greenhouse gas emissions, an estimated couple of hundred million tons per year when all added up, or about the equivalent of taking 35 million cars off the road,” Skernolis said.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement, as the Journal Star’s Cindy Lange-Kubick found when she spent an hour at the Bluffs Road Landfill last week as part of her Lincoln Clockwise series. Lange-Kubick saw 30 trucks dump their loads in 60 minutes, watching plastics, glass and other recyclable material join the daily mountain of trash.

More residents should follow the lead of their recycling neighbors. The faster that community standards change, the more the community — in fact, the whole planet — will benefit.