Challenging times require support and determination

posted in: News | 0

In a recent article in The New York Times, John Tierney announced that not only is recycling expensive and inefficient, but wholly unnecessary because there is plenty of land to site new landfills, so no worries. Continue your conspicuous consumption unabated because it is better to bury than recover, so why bother?

 

In the same week that this article came out we gave a tour to a group of young students and, as we always do, we asked, “do you recycle?” One student’s hand shot up and they replied, “At my house we put the garbage and recyclables in one can, that way my mom says I don’t have to worry.” There is that phrase again: don’t worry. We have plenty of space for landfills; we don’t have to take responsibility for our waste because some other person with gloved hands will sift through our filthy trash and attempt to recover what we couldn’t be bothered to simply place in a separate container. No worries!

 

Of course we take exception to both of these approaches and we try to get people to understand that we live on a planet of finite resources. If you bury paper, you have to cut down trees to get more. If you bury plastics, you have to drill more oil to make more bottles. If you bury glass, you have to extract sand and limestone to make new bottles. I don’t care how much land we have; this premise just does not make sense. Jobs are lost, pollution is created, greenhouse emissions increase, and we are all lulled into the false sense that we don’t have to do anything to preserve and protect the planet that we all inhabit.

 

In a world where the global economy dictates what has value one day to the next, recyclable materials that are mostly sold for export have taken a nosedive. This change of fortunes came fast and it seems like it won’t be changing any time soon. What this means is that many recyclers will disappear while we continue to consume at an unprecedented pace, and all this stuff will have no place to go but in the garbage.

 

Many recyclers have already stopped even trying to recover plastics and they are going straight to the landfill. Metals have declined in value by up to 75%. These are the times that test our resolve to do the right thing no matter what the cost and that is the pledge that Sedona Recycles makes to everyone that uses our drop-off sites everyday. We are in it for all the right reasons and we will always be honest with you, not only about where things go, but about times like these as well.

 

We are like no other nonprofit in this town. We don’t pull on the heartstrings like many others, which do so with good reason. We are the behind-the-scenes people who do our very best to see that what you bring to us finds life again in a new product that doesn’t require cutting or extraction. We care about our community and – beyond it – the planet. This is serious business and we are up against obstacles every day that we have to overcome.

 

This is where you come in. Like all other nonprofit organizations, we rely on outside funding to survive and the need for your support has never been more urgent than now. We are absolutely the good guys and a real asset to our community. In the last two months, we have heartbreakingly closed seven drop-off recycling sites. Every one of these sites recycled hundreds of tons of material a year. Some closed due to new construction. Others closed due to lack of support from the cities in which they were located. Regardless of the reason, people were left without the ability to do the simplest thing we can all do for the environment: recycle.

 

If Sedona Recycles is something you support and believe in, then make a donation today as part of our 90 Gifts in 90 Days fundraiser. We depend on you just like you depend on us to do the right thing and make waste a thing of the past. We will continue to fight the good fight every day because we believe in what we do and we know how important the education we provide is to the students in our schools and the public we serve as part of providing a sustainable future for us all.

 

Please visit www.sedonarecycles.org or call (928) 204-1185 to find out more about this important fundraiser and other ways you can support our programs. As always, we thank you for your support.

 

by Jill McCutcheon, Sedona Recycles

Sedona Red Rock News

October 21, 2015