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April 2004
Celebrate Earth Day and get into recycling
By Katrena Velarde, Peterson Center
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As Earth Day approaches on April 22, everyone should take recycling more seriously to save the Earth’s natural resources.
People in some communities may not recycle because they may not have the right motivations. Some may feel that recycling is not paying off. They need reassurance that recycling is actually taking place, and they need to know that the items they are recycling are being put to good use.
One problem pertaining to lack of involvement in recycling in our community is that there is little public education on recycling. You don't see people on television promoting the recycling of goods. Families are not encouraging one another to recycle either because they are too busy, or they just don't think it is worth the hassle.
In 1991, Nevada legislators passed a law requiring Nevada counties to be recycling up to 25 percent of their residential and commercial waste by 1995. Out of the 17 counties in the state, none of them met the 1995 goal. In 2000, Nevada was ranked one of the five worst states in America for recycling.
The local government's lack of promoting recycling; and the fact that so much open land is available for use as a potential landfill, reducing the need to recycle; are partly to blame for Nevada's low rate of recycling.
The reality is that recycling is not a conversation that politicians talk about. With thousands of new residents moving to Clark County each month, environmentalists such as UNLV’s Tara Pike, creator of the university’s Rebel Recycling Program, would like to see recycling programs better promoted.
"People get confused about what they can and cannot recycle," Pike told the Las Vegas Sun. "All these new people who move here don't even know we have a program."
Republic Services of Southern Nevada, Clark County’s major sanitation service, provides recycling programs for area residents. The company also distributes recycling information with customer’s bills and even occasionally gives plant tours to educate children about recycling.
Some consider recycling just a fad. If it ends up that way, there will never be a true drive for recycling. The big impact that usually drives people to recycle is the high disposal costs, but since we don't have that problem in Nevada, people don’t think recycling is important.
Environmentalists promote recycling because they know that the world has a shrinking, perhaps irreplaceable, supply of natural resources. Like environmentalists, the average person needs to know how recycling helps the community and the Earth. If we take the time to promote recycling and its benefits as well as the consequences of not recycling, the participation in recycling will dramatically increase in our community.
-Return to April 03/04-
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