THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 14, 1996 TAG: 9609140001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty
LENGTH: 74 lines
An empty Corona bottle nestled among the coffee grounds in the trash. An empty 64-ounce Tropicana orange juice jug protruding from the chicken bones. Coke cans smashed flat and sandwiched between paper napkins in the bin.
It didn't take a private eye to figure out what was going on: My husband had secretly stopped recycling.
While the rest of us in the family continued to rinse our plastic and aluminum containers and take them outside to our recycling container, he was defiantly slipping recyclable material into the garbage.
I said nothing.
Then last week, when I reminded him that the newspapers needed to go to the dumpster at the elementary school next to his office he bristled.
``Why should I take papers to the recycling bins?'' he asked. ``So the city can just dump them in the landfill? Just throw them away.''
This is the same man whose excitement about curbside recycling was such that he sent away for a designer wooden recycling rack for newspapers the same week the blue bins came to our neighborhood.
He, like me and many others, was miffed when the city terminated its agreement with the Southeastern Public Service Authority (SPSA) in July. In June we had been irritated by the mayor's remarks that ``there are a number of people who are very wed to the little blue bin they take down to the curb.''
But when my husband read the recent headlines - that the city was caught red-handed sneaking recyclable paper to the landfill, he lost faith.
He has a point. It may have been just one misguided bureaucrat, but it sure looked like arrogance on the part of the city of Virginia Beach to take the papers that we, the people, hauled to their strategically located bins, then to quietly chuck them with the coffee grounds and disposable diapers at the city dump.
All the time they were regaling us with talk of plans for a better curbside collection system in the future.
Who in the world believes them now?
Not me. Not my husband. And not Linda Shore who wrote a letter to the editor this week announcing that she too was a reformed recycler.
Ironically, the straw that broke Ms. Shore's back was not the sneaky newspaper shenanigans but the overflowing, unsafe and unsanitary bins at Salem Middle School.
``I refuse to pollute school grounds because my collected materials will not fit in the bins . . . ever. I will try again if the city ever gets its act together, but in the meantime, my recyclables are going in the trash,'' she worte.
I still recycle, although not with the gusto I once did. My kids and I hauled the newspapers and all our glass and aluminum cans to the drop-off center in front of A.R.E. last weekend. We did it, not fully trusting that the city is actually recycling the stuff, but because, frankly, it makes us feel better.
This feeling that those of us who recycle are city stooges is prevalent.
``Where do you suppose they're secretly dumping the plastic?'' asked a man with a German shepherd as he tossed a load of plastic milk bottles into the recycling bins last Saturday.
Nevertheless, we stood there, sorting our brown bottles from our green bottles from our aluminum cans. As always, the clear-glass bin was overflowing. This time, instead of taking the clear glass home and coming another day, I followed the lead of the recyclers before me and stacked all that glass on the roadside in an unsightly heap.
When the city dumped our recyclable stuff, a lot of the civic pride I once felt in working to protect the environment was destroyed. The city has made me feel powerless to ``think globally, act locally.''
But about a week after the newspaper caper came terrific news: Virginia Beach finished the year with a $20 million surplus. What I think the city ought to do with that money is a topic for another column, but perhaps the city ought to immediately take out about $720,000.
That's what it would cost to rejoin the SPSA regional recycling program for one year.
It's a small price to pay to win back the trust of the people. MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB