TRASH TALKIN’ BLOGGER BRAGS or RECYCLING A 10-YEAR-OLD RANT

It is not very often that a journalist gets to say I told you so, but this blog gives me bragging rights.

A decade ago, I wrote an op-ed piece for the Concord Monitor saying that state capital’s recycling rate was a disgrace: at 2.73 percent (based on 1997 figures), the lowest rate of any city in the state. At the time, Concord picked up trash for free and would charge to pick up recyclables. Dover, which did it the other way around, recycled and composted 54 percent.

Concord, the home of the state Department of Environmental Services, and the state headquarter of a slew of environmental and conservation groups, should have been setting an example. Instead, it was dragging the state down.

There was some talk on local radio at the time, but nothing happened. For one, we were locked into a sweet deal with our incinerator in which we got off cheap as the host community. In other words, since we were willing to breathe our trash, we don’t have to pay as much to throw it away. Recycling it would be still cheaper, but it would have necessitated a second pick up that would outweigh the savings.

Our entire attitude was backward! I nearly shouted. Instead of subsidizing reuse, we were subsidizing waste. The “second pick up", should be garbage, not recyclables, I argued in subsequent articles and letters. That’s the one that residents should pay for! Such pay-as-you-throw policies cause a dramatic increase in recycling rates everywhere it is used. Pay as you throw didn’t just make environmental sense, it saved economic cents, and dollars.

But people said that trash is a city service that residents shouldn’t have to pay for.

In Concord, water usage is a municipal service. But no one would dream of saying that the person who maintains a swimming pool and runs the sprinkler system when it’s raining should have to pay the same as someone who uses shower water to flush their toilet.

No, water is a precious resource that we have to conserve. We don’t have an unlimited supply of fresh drinking water. People should pay for what they use.

Guess what? We don’t have an unlimited supply of landfill space. Our air can only take so much carbon before we destroy the planet. And the regulations to slow down the pollution cost a lot of money. So when I bothered to take my recyclables down to the city recycling center, I was paying through the nose for some idiot down the street who just tossed them out in the curb.

Well, I gave up on my pay-as-you-throw kick. But other people took up the idea, thanks partly to the fact that our sweet incinerator deal was coming to an end and our tipping fees were about to skyrocket. First, Concord instituted free curb side pick up for recyclables. And last year – thanks to the vision and tenacity of Mayor Jim Bouley (who incidentally, I voted against on principle because I didn’t think a lobbyist should be in charge of city) pushed it through.

People had to pay $2 to buy a purple bag to throw away their trash. Free recycling pickup of blue and green binds however went from every other week to once a week. People said that no one would obey it, that trash would be thrown out into the streets, or on their neighbor’s lawn. But none of this happened. Instead, we had a flowering of purple, blue and green. And not nearly as much purple as expected.

The suspicious wanted to know, where was all our trash going to?. I can speak for my family. We already recycled, but now we recycled in earnest. Every toilet paper tube went was flatted with the cardboard. Paper bags in most rooms. A compost can next to the sink. Mow the leaves onto the grass. And no, please don’t give me a plastic bag for one toothbrush. And you can keep the receipt. Trash was the exception, not the rule.

And here we have the result.

In its first three months, trash was cut in half. In one year, recycling went up 75 percent, a greater increase than anyone anticipated (except of course, yours truly.) The program didn’t cost money. It saved money, though the final figures aren’t in on how much it saved.

Ten years later, it finally happened.

I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.

Pay as you throw. Pay as you throw. Pay as you throw.

Other cities and towns: Get with the program!