The Great Trash Debate

Trash is the big topic in my two home towns. The Red Bluff Landfill is going to reach capacity in the very near future. It's phase two section will open at that time, which is supposed to last us until 2025. In Pahoa (Hilo) Hawaii, my other home town, the county wants to bring in a wheelabrator plant to incinerate trash and turn it to energy. It is meeting with lots of roadblocks, with arguments from the plausible (it will create more air pollution) to the ridiculous (with an incineration plant, people will stop recycling). Frankly, as far as the pollution is concerned, the trash run-off water seems to be a graver concern, and the pollution would be minimal, certainly far less than our active volcano puts out each day.

I wish that recycling was more of a priority to the average person, and that we could get away from all of our plastic use--plastic NEVER goes away. And it can only be recycled once, so those plastic grocery bags need to be reused--and reused and reused, as many times as possible. I refuse to take them at the store, but clerks always try to put stuff in them. I suppose they are easier to use than reusable bags or paper. I actually had clerks at Wal-Mart get frustrated with me, once for having to use my bags, and once because I refused bags and had her put everything back in the cart (I had left my bags in the car and bagged when I got out there). I have even had them put things with their own handles into bags for me--like gallons of milk (trying to get away from them too--plastic).

Big Island Hawaii makes recycling very difficult for the average person. You must carefully sort all of your recyclables yourself and drive them to the waste transfer station, but they don't take certain things (we tried to recycle glass liquor bottles. They would not take them). There is no home pick up (in the Puna district, anyway). People are lazy--we don't want to go to all of that effort, most especially since the government seems less than motivated to encourage it.