Congratulations

Dear Editor,

I have been a subscriber to THE EQUITY for several years now, courtesy of a generous gift from close friends on Leslie Lake.

I want to recognize the positive recent changes that have significantly built on THE EQUITY’s foundation as a successful local weekly. In my view, the changes have further improved the paper’s reporting. I believe that it is now more organized and readable, while its scope and coverage remain comprehensive.

Congratulations on the reforms.

Andy Macdonald, Ottawa

Recycling revisited

Dear Editor,

I’ve heard it said that “recycled collections all just go to the landfill anyway.” While this is not entirely untrue, it is an exaggeration.

The system for recycling has emerged relatively recently, and is still in its infancy. The citizenry has yet to fully embrace the notion, and often fails to sort household waste properly into separate streams. When workers at a transfer facility encounter kitty litter tossed in with recycling, they don’t have time to separate the offending material, so the whole batch gets dumped into the lowest-grade garbage, where it adds to the weight, mass and cost of garbage to landfill.

I grew up in a world where and when there was little outright waste. Things were made of wood or metal and could be repaired or repurposed. Glass and metals recycle very well and can be ground, melted and re-moulded into new products. It’s within my adult lifetime that glass bottles for pop and beer were replaced by “disposable” plastic. No longer do kids and under-employed people go along roadside ditches collecting glass bottles at a profit.

Everything is now in plastic, which can be recycled but it degrades very quickly. You might not know that aluminum pop cans have a plastic lining that complicates the recycling of cans. That’s the reason that pop tops are more popular as a fundraising collection than cans. They are pure metal. Most plastics cannot be purified and end up as black garbage bags or outdoor furniture, which breaks down in sunlight and pinches your legs, just when you’re hoping to relax.

Recycling of plastics is an imperfect system, and if we don’t do our part at the source, it has little chance of working. If you grow weary of hearing about landfills or incinerators, sort properly, and the need for such drastic final solutions becomes less imperative. Don’t wait for the government to impose penalties; do it as a team sport, making a cleaner environment for ourselves.

Robert Wills, Thorne and Shawville