Recycling isn't increasing in the Scenic City. In fact, people have understandably confessed that the city has made it too hard, and they're ready to heave all of their refuse into the trash -- and who knows how many have already given in to the allure of the landfill? Pitch it all in those ginormous trash cans the city has distributed throughout our neighborhoods, and it will disappear forever! Like magic! No separating! No driving! No storing it for the rest of the month!
Further, this new monthly recycling program hasn't saved the city any money, since more money was put into increasing the number of dropoff centers in the city. And, vacuously enough, $100,000 in taxpayer funds was spent on a (hamfisted) PR campaign, complete with a ridiculous recycling raccoon, meant to convince Chattanoogans that these changes are all a good thing.
Well, they're not a good thing. When you look around at what progressive communities are doing around the country, Chattanooga's efforts clearly are a step backwards, despite silly claims to the contrary:
He said over about a year's time, those using the recycling dropoff center on Access Road went from 795 to 2,058 in a month and at the Patten Center in Lookout Valley went from 370 to over 2,000 per month.Oy. Well, of course the use of dropoff centers has gone up! Because we no longer have curbside pickup! And by requiring each individual who has recyclables to drive to a dropoff center, you're trading the environmental benefit of recycling with the increased pollution caused by so many individual vehicles putting extra miles on our roads.
And in the meantime, davidm, who did a series of posts about recycling that introduced me to Norcal (and which, sadly, have since been lost to server issues), contacted Josh when he did his research. Josh, who used to live in Chattanooga, now lives in the San Francisco area and gave david the following report:
"Here, they've removed every obstacle to recycling. Recycling day is always the same as garbage day so it's easy to remember. Since you're putting everything out at once, you're more likely to recycle everything you can. No sorting. No special-colored bags.Unfortunately, our mayor has taken the opposite approach, by making recycling efforts as frustrating as possible. And the mayor's office is so enamored with that absurd raccoon (has anyone spotted that thing lately? Word has it the creature's last appearance was on the mayor's Christmas Card), that he's going to throw away another $100,000 after wasting the same amount last year. It's a great deal for Waterhouse Public Relations, but what does the taxpayer have to show for all that money, besides a rarely-spotted oversized raccoon? And why, if this money was supposedly spent last year to conceive of and develop this PR campaign, is the same amount necessary for this year, to merely continue on with more of the same?
I think perhaps we're not getting our money's worth.
6 comments:
I volunteer with Team Recycle, part of Recycle Right, and we did one education event a week last year. We met with neighborhood association leaders, a young professionals group, got recycling put in at the Chattanooga Market and during the summer at the riverfront concert series, did a full week of Earth Day education activities at UTC and the Zoo, went to several BI-LOs and Hamilton Place Mall during Easter (next to the bunny), Culturefest, Two Bridges...and every time, we passed out a ton of education things and answered people's questions about recycling. If we were just walking around talking about recycling, it probably wouldn't have been easy...but Rocky gets kids to come over and with them comes their parents, who we talk to about recycling. Rocky is a great visual for schools, too, and since kids are the future of this community it's nice that he makes it possible for us to go talk about recycling to them. Maybe, since you don't think you've seen Rocky enough, you should check out recycleright.org and look at the photo gallery. And we'll be at the Education Expo this Saturday here in Chattanooga. Did you know Tyner Middle started a Recycle Right program based on one of the presentations we did at schools? And if I'm not mistaken, the number of people participating in curbside tripled in 2007 versus 2006. Like 9,000 homes or something now--I don't remember the number but I'm pretty sure it's in the same article in which you found that other number. And the best part? Now that they've done this education program, the "product is cleaner"...meaning, people aren't doing what they did in 2006 and putting their broken toys, tennis shoes, old windows and whatever out with their recycling. I've gotten to work one-on-one with the folks at the pr firm and it kinda makes me mad when I hear people talk about how they don't know what's going on and what they did and just assume that they did nothing. Why don't you ask them? Or at least take a look at the website (which they did) to see their events.
Like Tulsa,OK, a unworkable system!
If we are going to be spending $100,000 in educating the public on recycling couldn't we try some common sense things like:
1) a flyer in my mail telling me the correct way to recycle - pictures/diagrams etc... of what I can and can't recycle. I still don't know if I can put my plastic grocery bags in or not.
2)a tv commercial that comes on during my evening news that helps me understand what, how and why to recycle
I went to a Lookouts game last year and they did a "fun" little contest/skit or something between innings that helped show how to "Recycle Right". The thing that surprised me was the raccoon was MIA I would have thought he would be there for something like that!
If my math is correct, curbside recycling lost approximately 4,000 household participants between 2004 and 2008.
I applaud your volunteer efforts, Matt, I really do. But I don't buy in to the whole "people were throwing shoes" into the recycling bin argument. If that's the case, then Chattanoogans are the dumbest people in the world and deserve the landfills creeping up to their backdoors.
I have to echo davidm's comments. I too think it's great that you work so hard to encourage recycling in Chattanooga, Matt, but that doesn't change the fact that Littlefield has made recycling harder than it used to be, and that in Chattanooga, it is much harder to recycle than it is in other communities.
That's not progress. That's regression.
I'm not sure that the numbers that it is up by two thirds sounds right. I notice a lot less recycling on my route that before. Also, there are always people who put it out the wrong week, and you see it outside for too long - often in the rain. As for the increase in recycling, I think it is because I line mine up and down the whole block since it takes so much space to put out a whole MONTH'S worth. Why not try something really innovative - cut trash service down to once a month and move recycling back to once a week. That's the only way to make people see how much that they are throwing away that actually can be recycled or composted.
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