Column for Oct. 29, 2009

If you don't recycle this newspaper, birds are going to die. I'll bet you did not know that was a fact. Neither did I, until my six year old came home from school and informed me that it would happen. Sure enough, I was told this not once, but twice on two separate days. When I inquired as to where he had heard that, he told me that it was being taught in his first grade class and that his teacher told him that. He was beginning to tear up over the thought of sweet, innocent little birdies laying on the ground, dead as a result of someone not recycling a newspaper.

Twice, I had to instruct him that what he was hearing was itself, rubbish. I had to inform him that newspapers are made of paper, which come from wood products, i.e., trees. I realize that he is too young to understand basic economics, so I tried to put it in a way he could understand. He has seen and helped family with growing vegetables, flowers, and the like. I told him that if he wanted a harvest from his plants, he had to put seed or starter plants in the ground. Trees are no different. They are a renewable resource.

Trees are harvested for wood products, plain and simple. Whether the use is lumber for construction, toilet paper, furniture, baseball bats, whatever, we need wood. Lumber companies are smart enough to use good forest management techniques so that they will still be in business decades down the road. If all trees are cut down, it will be like the Dr. Seuss story, "The Lorax", and we will have nothing for a forested landscape. According to The Center for Free Market Environmentalism, "The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests exceeds by a factor of twenty the amount of wood and paper that is consumed by the world each year".

I have done some research on recycling. There are a lot of myths being foisted upon the public from both sides of the issue. Actually, we have plenty of landfill space and the United States does well with its waste generation. Two facts according to EcoWorld I found interesting. First, "the total land area needed to hold all of America’s garbage for the next century would be only about 10 miles square". The Center for Free Market Environmentalism clarifies this point, saying that the landfill would be ten miles "on a side". The second interesting fact was that "the average household in the United States generates one-third less trash each year than does the average household in Mexico." Since we have so many immigrants from Mexico in the U.S. and that number is growing rapidly, will that figure change? Doubtful. As stated by EcoWorld, "we now produce about twice as much output per unit of energy as we did 50 years ago and five times as much as we did 200 years ago." Thus, we are far more energy efficient in today's manufacturing.

I could go on with a bunch of facts and figures, but I would simply encourage each of you to do your own investigation. I know that birds can fly to a new tree if his tree is cut down. I know that nature adapts and that man has a way of making efficient use of the natural resources available when profit is on the line.

I will add this one particular quote, though. "On average, extensive recycling is 35 percent more costly than conventional disposal, and basic curbside recycling is 55 percent more costly than conventional disposal." Just from personal experience here in Selma, I find that not all items are taken by the recycling vendor in town. More than once, I have found items left on my lawn which I have placed in the recycling bin. My neighbor has had the same thing happen. I did not know that the sorting facility was at my curb, and I certainly did not appreciate the polymer container being littered on my lawn.

If you are like me, you don't run outside every time you open a can of cat food. I use an old plastic bucket to collect my recyclables right next to my garbage can in my kitchen. When the bucket gets full, we empty it into the recycling dumpster. Of course, I don't want Spaghettios, Coke, tuna, or the Wal-Mart special Ol' Roy dog food cans all nastily crudding up, smelling up, and attracting bugs into my kitchen, so we take the time to rinse out the containers first. Ah, there is nothing like using up more natural resources in an attempt to allegedly save natural resources and "save the planet". Phooey.