Is Recycling Even A Question Anymore?

Sadly, yes. One of the tips in "The Green Year" about doing one of the most basic things for the environment is simply: Recycle!
Unfortunately, that tip leads me into a story in The Baxter Bulletin this week about Mountain Home, Ark., the largest town in our area, eliminating their curbside recycling program on Monday.The recycling industry has taken a big hit, along with the rest of us, in this economy. Cans, cardboard, paper and especially glass, just isn't bringing in the profit it did even a year ago. It is no longer profitable for recycling companies, who operate like other companies in our capitalistic society - for a profit, to do curbside recycling in many areas. Most recyclers even stopped taking glass altogether as long as two years ago. According to the article, it was proposed to charge Mountain Home residents a mere 60 cents per month for the convenience, but the city council failed to act on that measure.
This also ties in with my post on Monday stating that as individuals, we can no longer wait for the government, or large corporations to take the lead in making sure our children and grandchildren will have a clean planet with clean air and be able to see animals in their natural habitat.
Jodi Helmer quotes in her book that the recycling rate in the U.S. is just at 33 percent.
According to unesco website, the U.S. produces about 64 million tons of waste each year. This is compared to Germany who produces just a little over 4 tons of waste each year.
That waste is going to landfills, being shipped to foreign islands and floating on barges at sea. Jodi Helmer also states in "The Green Year," that if every household in the U.S. would separate just their plastic, paper and aluminum products, we would reduce that waste in the landfills by 75 percent.
In the Baxter Bulletin article, one resident is quoted as saying, "We don't know what we'll do," now that the curbside recycling program is gone.
While I agree it to be a very irresponsible for our government to allow something as important as recycling to operate only if it turns a profit, we must all take responsibility. As rural residents, we don't even have the convenience of having our non-recyclable trash picked up. We sort our trash from recyclables every week and haul them on one of our regular multi-errand trips to the transfer station in town, where our recyclables and trash go to two different lots. In the city, it's much easier to simply keep your recyclables from regular trash pick up and swing by the recycling place on one of your own multi-errands out.
Sometimes doing the right thing isn't about making a profit, nor is it the most convenient, we just do it because it's the right thing.