The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
City council must be used to being pelted with the bullets of criticism. Whenever something goes wrong in our community, theyÕre often the ones left shouldering the blame. Sometimes such chiding is justified, but there are other times when it is not. Take the case of recycling. At their meeting last week, city council reviewed two letters suggesting they were at fault for the recent demise of the Recycling CentreÕs school and business pick-up program. As was rightly pointed out, the decision to end the pick-ups did not belong to the city. Instead, it rested entirely with the board of the Flin Flon and District Environment Council. It was, of course, an unfortunate and reluctant move. But like any other organization, the Environment Council has a budget to work with, and if the dollars and cents donÕt add up, expenses have to be trimmed. Otherwise you donÕt survive. Instead of accepting this basic financial reality, some have chosen to unleash on city council for their alleged laissez-faire attitude toward recycling. Nevermind that the city awards the Recycling Centre an annual grant even as services decline. Forget that the city bailed out the centre with a Òone-time emergency grantÓ last year. And overlook the fact that the city contracts out operation of the landfill to the Environment Council, giving the recycling program even more revenue. If weÕre going to assign guilt for the decline of recycling services, letÕs at least direct it at the proper target: ourselves. Earlier this year, the Recycling Centre tried to get at least 400 homes to pay $50 a year to resume residential curbside pick-ups, which were canned last year in a cost-cutting move. The centre enthusiastically spread the word. The media did its part with a number of stories. Unless they happened to live under a rock, people knew about the revival campaign. The end result? The centre fell well short of its goal. When far fewer than 400 homes in our area are unwilling to pay less than a dollar a day for a service, itÕs pretty clear that the interest is narrow. And interest would likely be just as limited had City Hall okayed last yearÕs proposed solution to low recycling rates: tack $50 onto every homeownerÕs bill and give the cash to the Recycling Centre so it can resurrect the curbside service. If people refuse to pay such a fee on their own volition, what happens if you force them? A reasonable guess is that you breed resentment and further turn them off from the recycling cause. Of course other communities have instituted mandatory fees for pick-ups, regardless of whether the payer actually uses the service. But the groundswell of support for this kind of measure simply doesnÕt exist in the Flin Flon area. Rightly or wrongly, thatÕs the way it is. Rather than pointing the finger at city council or calling for forced fees, the recycling community needs to do a better job of selling their ideology to the populace. What are the benefits of recycling? What are the harms of not recycling? How does recycling benefit our planet and even our economy? When residents are sold on the answers to those questions, they will be happy to sign up for curbside pick-ups. They might even welcome that contentious $50 fee proposed last year. Local Angle runs Fridays.
