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Why is it so tough to recycle in rural communities?
November 25th, 2009 by Mike Knutson
Congratulations Salem! You are one of the newest communities in South Dakota to participate in and benefit from the RecycleBank recycling program.
Like most Americans, I understand the importance of recycling, but I’ve not always been as consistent in my recycling efforts as I should be. After all, it’s usually inconvenient and there’s very little reward for recycling (outside of it is the right thing to do).
According to this article in the Mitchell Daily Republic, some of these reasons have disappeared in Salem and in fourteen other rural SD communities through the RecycleBank program being offered by Novak Sanitary Services.
Through the RecycleBank program, residents are (1) able to receive coupons based on the volume of waste they recycle, and (2) don’t have to sort their recyclable material.
When I lived in South Carolina during the early 1990s, my wife and I were regular recyclers, but fell out of the practice after moving back to rural South Dakota. The reasons for this backslide were simple: there was no organized recycling in the town where I lived; and no one else collected any waste other than aluminum cans.
The Daily Republic article has me thinking: How many rural communities in South Dakota offer recycling? The article identifies fourteen additional small towns using the RecycleBank program, but I wonder how many others are recycling through other programs?
And if rural communities are not offering recycling services, why not? Why is it so difficult to offer recycling in a small town?
Photo credit: sparkle lavalamp - Flickr
Tags: green, recycling, Salem SD, South Dakota
Posted in In the News, Rural | Comments (
2 )
December 1st, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Bozeman isn’t a small community (pop. 37,000) but they have integrated their municipal garbage and recycling program. They are even thinking about raising the cost of their curb-side garbage service to help keep the cost of the curb-side recycling program low so city residents can take part.
I would love to see close rural communities combining recycling efforts, but it can be difficult to balance the costs of pick-up and transfer with the selling price. Even if a town can only recycle one efficient item, like aluminum which saves 96% of its original energy when recycled, it can make a big difference.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:16 am
I hear you Morgan. The scale of a community does matter. What I like about the RecycleBank program in Salem is that a regional waste hauler helped organize the effort. Novak serves Sioux Falls and surrounding area as well, so they must have the scale to do a project like this.
But it also takes a community — or a group of people within a community — who are committed to recycling to make it happen. A little probing and a little pushing goes a long way to convincing a community that they need to recycle, even if it costs a little more as in Bozeman.