D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April 2010
Second Chances
Does Las Cruces finally "get it" on recycling?
By Jeff Berg
A subject that comes up frequently in my conversations with newcomers to Las Cruces is recycling. Most people, me included, never bothered to look at the community's recycling services when we were thinking about moving here. We all took it for granted that recycling would be just a part of normal everyday life, like water and electricity.
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Student members of Ed White's "Green
Team" at Mesilla Park Elementary School. |
I remember my introduction to recycling back in the mid-1970s in suburban Chicago. I would occasionally encounter these giant containers for recycling newspapers, glass and aluminum and steel cans. Back then, one could even sell old newspapers for recycling, coming home with a few coins or a dollar or two to go along with the warm fuzzy feeling that came from doing something positive for Ma Earth.
I assumed upon arriving in Las Cruces that I'd find a vigorous recycling program already in place. Living where I did when I first moved here, I knew that curbside pick-up would not be an option, but I never suspected that it wasn't an option for anyone. After all, this was 2001, and every place I had lived in the last 10-15 years had this as common practice; the US has more than 8,600 curbside recycling programs nationwide.
Nationally, 33.4% of solid waste gets recycled, 12.6% is burned in combustion facilities and 54% makes its way into landfills. The state of New Mexico averages 11%. In Las Cruces, less than 6% of solid waste has been getting recycled, and most of that was organic material, such as tree branches mulched for many years at the city dump and offered back to residents for yard use.
Even today, curbside recycling is still not available in Las Cruces — but it is at last on the horizon.
I did keep recycling by sorting, saving and dropping off the items that the city of Las Cruces took, most of it at one place — about 15 miles from my home, next to the sewage-treatment plant. For quite some years, it accepted newspapers (sans glossy inserts), steel cans, plastic bottles (but only the #1 and #2 varieties of clear plastic), corrugated cardboard and milk jug containers. Aluminum could be sold to a couple of different businesses, and plastic bags could be recycled at Albertson's.
But this wasn't enough for me. Besides, rumors abounded for years that the stuff was carted to the landfill anyway, so why bother? True or not, it was something that bugged me, though it might have been an urban legend started by those too lazy to recycle.
I did some research, and over time, I found that when I went to El Paso, the kind man at the city recycling center would allow me to drop off all manner of paper, chipboard (cereal box-type paper), magazines and those damnable glossy inserts from the local daily. Briefly, Fort Bliss would allow civilians to use its recycling facility, which took most everything including glass. Trips to Albuquerque or Tucson gave reason to fill the car with glass (both cities), "waxies" (rice milk-type containers, Tucson only), and the paper I had on hand if I hadn't been to El Paso for a while.
I became much more conscious of "pre-cycling," not allowing myself to fall into the trap of buying stuff that is overly packaged. I'd been using cloth bags in all stores, not just grocery stores, for years, so that was not a problem.
I found other odd outlets that would allow me to dispose of almost anything in a sane manner, except those other lousy plastics. My solution to that was to spend more money than it was worth to send them to California. I had once lived in lovely Santa Cruz County, Calif., where you could recycle anything. (My wife often warned our neighbors to look for her at the end of the driveway one day in a big container when I was through with her.) So, about once a month, we would pack up a box of cleaned miscellaneous plastic, all numbers, all sizes, and mail it to a friend who still lived there. When she moved, I was able to sweet-talk a cousin who lives north of San Francisco into taking on the job, promising her a lunch anytime we were in the area.
Frustrated friends and neighbors also started participating in our ad hoc recycling program. Until recently, anyone who was going anywhere would contact the others to take some of their stashed bottles, chipboard and miscellaneous paper. There have been times when I have gone to Albuquerque with a Renault full of glass and paper (fortunately the Border Patrol has taken little interest). Our local garbage picker-upper, Mesilla Valley Disposal, also has a sort of pseudo-curbside pickup and, for a small fee, will take anything that is recycled through the county program and haul it to the recycling center for you. Mostly it is a courtesy service, but it is much appreciated, and should be better known.
Although the prices paid for recycled materials by those companies who reuse them are not readily available, a chart I found from October 2008 notes that at that time, cardboard was going for $55-$90 a ton, mixed paper for $5-$40 a ton, and #1 PET plastic bottles, one of the more common types of plastic, 3-10 cents a pound. So there is certainly a market for "one man's trash."
Recently, the South Central Recycling Partnership (SCRaP) announced that one can now comingle recyclable items in the several drop-off points around Las Cruces. Plus you can now drop off all forms of paper along with that damn chipboard, AND Styrofoam chunks AND peanuts as well.
Trash Tips
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SCRaP — and Las Cruces' long-overdue progress in recycling — dates from the fall of 2008. That's when the South Central Solid Waste Authority (SCSWA), under the guidance of a progressive board consisting of three Las Cruces city councilors and three Doa Ana County commissioners, created SCRaP as a hands-on recycling advisory board. Launched as a volunteer program, SCRaP's goal was to coordinate the efforts of individuals and businesses in Las Cruces who wanted to get residents to participate in recycling.
Patrick Peck, the director of SCSWA, is very proactive and envisions vast improvements in the recycling system. Besides the comingling program, he has retired fees for recycling tires, one of the most common things found in illegal dumps around the area. He helped start Keep Las Cruces Beautiful (see "Talking Trash," February 2009). There have been numerous projects and school visits, along with field trips to the 45,000-square-foot Friedman Material Recovering Facility in El Paso. There is even a business recycling program, which for a mere $30 a month will pick up and handle (sort) your recyclables.
And those rumors about the trucks that just take the recyclables to the landfill? Not true.
Suzanne Michaels, spokesperson for SCSWA and SCRaP, says, "We used to bringseparated recyclables (cardboard, newspaper, aluminum cans, etc.)from the drop-off centers and bail them at Amador Avenue and then ship them out to buyers. Now the mixed (single stream) recyclables are still brought to the transfer station, but then they are transferred to huge trucks that haul the recyclables to Friedman in northeast El Paso.