7/30/09 Letter to Editor re Recycling Center

[Printed as Guest Column] I suspect that there will be a number of letters complaining about the shutting down of regular operations at the recycling center. To some extent, I don't blame anyone for wanting to vent on this one; it certainly sounds bad. Lewisboro's recycling rate ranked near the bottom of the pile in statistics recently released by the County, so on its face, this would seem to be the wrong move at the wrong time. I believe however that this austerity move, just one of many large and small made in an effort to close the budget gap, could actually serve as the proverbial “kick in the pants” to push Lewisboro to the next level in sustainable waste management. A couple of weeks ago, 20-30 people from towns around the county gathered in Somers to hear Lewisboro’s Neil Cutler give an overview of options and best practices for managing and reducing the amount of material we send to landfills. Discussion followed, and the group intends to work on common approaches such as shared facilities and negotiating with carters for enhanced pickup options. I personally think that the key to increasing recycling rates is to expand the types of material we can put out on the curb and we will need the carters’ help with this. My carter only takes plastics 1 and 2 yet in some area towns they are already accepting 1-6. Maybe there could be periodic pickup of fluorescent bulbs or e-waste. Certainly mixed paper represents a large volume of the material going into our regular garbage and this could be recovered as well. The Lewisboro recycling center has been a great asset, but it has been taking two categories of material only – scrap metal and co-mingled glass and plastics. The latter is now taken by all carters, so in actuality, the only unique service we offered was the scrap metal. We are planning on opening up on a quarterly basis for this. We don’t know how it will all shake out exactly, but I feel certain that we will find ways to make it easier for residents to do the right thing with their waste.