City pushes for recycling

Earth Day is rapidly approaching and its objective of preserving and protecting the environment should be a goal that we are all working towards, city officials say, adding that one way citizens can help attain that goal is through recycling. The Mountain Home City Council is considering an ordinance for a curbside recycling program within the city limits. While the city currently offers a voluntary recycling service, the city's long-term plan has been to offer curbside recycling.

Recycling not only extends the life of landfills, but also saves valuable resources, officials say.

Mountain Home Disposal is trying to provide residents with information regarding the recycling program. Tanya Mericle, recycling manager with BFI/Mountain Home Disposal, explained that curbside recycling makes sense, helping to conserve natural resources.

An aluminum can that is thrown away today will still be a can 500 years from now, said Mericle. If exposed to the elements, aluminum takes at least 500 years to decompose -- steel takes at least 100 years to decompose. Recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to run a TV for three hours (the equivalent of half a gallon of gasoline). Mericle noted that 350,000 aluminum cans are produced every minute.

Paper also is easy to recycle, said Mericle. "Americans use 85 million tons of paper each year -- about 680 pounds per person. We throw away enough office and writing paper annually to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from Los Angeles to New York City."

If exposed to the elements, paper takes one to two months to decompose. Each year, enough wood and paper are thrown away to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years. Producing recycled paper takes half the energy and creates half the air and water pollution than producing paper directly from trees.

"For each ton of paper you recycle, you save 17 trees, 64 gallons of oil, 42 gallons of gasoline, 4,210 KWH, 7,000 gallons of water and 3.5 cubic yards of landfill space," said Mericle.

Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Mericle explained that plastic pop bottles can be recycled into a number of products such as carpeting, scrub pads, fillers for jackets and many household and industrial products. She pointed out that even if exposed to the elements, plastics never decompose.

"Recycling helps conserve our natural, and sometimes nonrenewable, resources," said Mericle. "One gallon of oil, when reprocessed, can generate enough energy to meet the electricity needs of your home for half a day."

With access to curbside service, residents will be able to set out plastics (must have a threaded neck and have a 1,2, or 3 within the triangular recycle symbol), aluminum/tin/steel (aerosol cans must be empty), newspaper (includes advertising inserts), magazines/catalogs, mixed paper (includes junk mail, envelopes, cereal boxes and paper), cardboard (folded and placed under the bin), and used motor oil (up to two gallons per week in a transparent jug and set next to the recycling bin).

Recyclables will be picked up on the same day as your trash service. Residential customers within Mountain Home will be provided with an 18-gallon blue recycling bin. Each bin will come with more detailed information on how to collect and sort the recyclables.

To help keep costs down, recyclables must be sorted into paper bags within the bin. The paper bags will be left for you to use again.

Additional material that will not fit inside the blue bin may be contained in boxes or other small containers and set out next to the blue bin for collection.

Residents will find information included with this month's water bills and company representatives will be meeting with area civic groups to provide more information on the curbside recycling proposal.

The curbside collection service would mean a small increase (about $1.80) in disposal fees.

For more information about the service, contact the Mountain Home Parks and Recreation Department at 587-2112 or call Mountain Home Disposal's recycling specialist at 685-7739.