Walmart ran the first recycling program in Lawrence. The store on South Iowa included a separate building with drive-up parking. The long building had a series of large openings with roll-up windows, so the facility could be closed up at night. Inside the building a line of large cardboard boxes sat beneath the windows, one for each of the various types of materials – white paper, newspapers, mixed paper, magazines, cardboard, chipboard, aluminum, tin cans, and separate boxes for each of the different numbered plastics.
Through Cottonwood, Inc., Walmart employed people with developmental disabilities who watched to make sure only the appropriate materials went into each category. When a box was full, an employee emptied and replaced it.
Sitting beside the recycling building were three dumpsters for glass containers, one each for clear, brown, and green glass. The green and brown dumpsters smelled strongly of beer.
This system had two great advantages. One, disabled people found useful employment. Two, the recycling was sorted by citizens as they deposited their materials, under the watchful eyes of sharp-eyed employees.
Then, when the city of Lawrence decided to begin weekly curbside recycling pickup, Walmart closed the recycling center. And that’s when the whole concept of recycling fell apart. Now, those who chose to recycle didn’t need to sort anything. Citizens simply put all recycled materials in one big bin. I suppose the sorting fell to city employees or other hapless person. If someone chose to toss a dirty diaper into recycling, who was to know? If newspapers and other paper materials got wet, who cared? If the peanut butter jar wasn't clean, so what?
No one should blame the Chinese for refusing to sort through our garbage in order to reprocess the salvageable materials. They quit taking our stuff.
Once again, Americans’ love of ease and convenience was our downfall.
The Sierra Club, in its July/August issue, assesses the recycling nightmare in an article titled “Trash Talk,” and concludes that the recycling system is broken. The article’s advises us to put everything in landfills until we can figure out a better way. I recommend that we look to Walmart for a workable solution.
Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer
1 comment:
I just heard from our family in France and their recycling is just like the old Walmarts. The people who make the trash do the sorting. As a bonus, in the appliance box they found a laptop that is in perfect shape. Now that's recycling which helps the budget!
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