Council should create curbside recycling

Talk about it

Recycling in Jamestown has long been a casual and sometimes frustrating experience for local residents. Now with curbside recycling, it could be a lot easier to be a good steward of the earth by reducing garbage going to the landfill and reusing material such as paper, plastic and metal. That’s something we can all support.

Two surveys in the community and an informal Sun online poll have overwhelmingly supported curbside recycling. “Curbside” in this case actually means picking up recyclables from homes just as garbage is picked up now. Those surveys even found residents would be willing to pay a fee for having their stuff picked up.

The Jamestown Chamber of Commerce Recycling Task Force has done its homework. Besides proposing the City Council offer what several other cities do automatically, the members have checked out how those communities do it. The task force has also proposed different options for how the city can do it.

More importantly, the task force is right about the challenges and costs associated with garbage and landfills. In Jamestown, all household garbage collected by the city goes to the sanitary landfill. That includes grass clippings and yard waste if they’re left out for collection. The sanitary landfill is specially designed to hold garbage that could contaminate groundwater. It’s lined with heavy-gauge plastic, so nothing leaks out. When the landfill is full, it’s capped with more plastic, covered with earth and monitored pretty much forever for leaks.

A sanitary landfill is a very expensive proposition, so why would we put anything in there that could be recycled?

Councilman Pat Nygaard said after the information was presented that the city should get on with it, and he’s right.

We support the plan to get a curbside recycling program going here. And as long as we’re at it, let’s also include recycling yard waste and grass clippings in that plan.

(Editorials are the opinion of Jamestown Sun management and the newspaper’s editorial board)

Tags: opinion, editorials, recycling