April 22nd is Earth Day, so I thought this would be a good time to check with Waste Management to see how Rentonites are doing with the new garbage collection program instituted in 2009.
At first, I thought it was some scheme to see how smart Renton citizens are. Could we be trained to put the right items in the right color tubs and put them at curbside on the right day? Or, was this just some government experiment similar to evaluating the mental capacities of chimpanzees?
But even chimpanzees get rewarded if they pick the right answer. So, are our efforts worth it? Are we making a difference? What is our reward?
The good news is that we are intelligent, cooperative and cutting back on landfill.
According to Linda Knight, City of Renton Solid Waste coordinator, and Jackie Lang of Waste Management, from 2008 to 2010 we have increased tons recycled by 27 percent and increased tons of yard waste and food scraps composted by 44 percent. Shifting residential collection to an every-other-week schedule and diverting food scraps from the landfill were bold and innovative moves for Renton that proved quite successful. All of these efforts helped decrease the number of tons of garbage disposed in landfills by 18 percent.
In addition, greenhouse gas emissions were significantly reduced by 33 percent due to every-other-week pickup for garbage and recyclables. And, in February Waste Management converted 19 of its trucks to “clean air” which further reduces gas emissions.
All of this reminds me of an animated movie titled “Wall-E.” Don’t let the term “animated” diminish its powerful message. Wall-E is a material handling loader who stays behind on Earth when all the humans move to another planet. Consumerism and disregard for the environment resulted in trash mounted so high that Earth was uninhabitable – you couldn’t move and you couldn’t breath.
Wall-E happily went about his duties as a material handler and took the trash, crushing it into cubes and stacking them on top of one another.
One day a space ship comes down from the newly inhabited planet and he hitches a ride back with them. He is devastated to see that the people did not learn their lesson as; once again, trash was building up. Disappointed, he returns to Earth.
In recent years and months, there are many who probably wish there was somewhere else to run as Mother Earth and her sister, Mother Nature, not so gently have reminded us of how fragile life on this planet can be.
But moving or escaping to another planet does not seem to be in our near future, nor that of many generations to come. And why should it? NASA with all its telescopes, probes and spaceships has yet to find a planet as beautiful and functional as Earth. It provides all that we need to sustain life and nurture the spirit.
After many years of living in apartments, a little boy finally got to move into his first home with a yard. He couldn’t contain his excitement and exclaimed, “I’m going to live here forever!” We should feel just as excited as that little boy over the prospect that we are going to inhabit the Earth forever.
We’ve made a lot of progress in solid-waste collection. However, slam dunking trash into color-coded bins is not the end game. It will take constant commitment from individuals, companies and governments to keep pursuing environmental strategies that respect the Earth, our only home.
Tish Gregory is a freelance writer and can be contacted at tishgregory@aol.com.
