Lexington could benefit from expanded recycling initiatives
I teach environmental science at Transylvania University. Each semester, I take my students on a field trip to the LFUCG Recycling Center on Thompson Road. For the past two semesters, I have added a component to the experience: Before we go on our trip, I have collected as much trash as I could carry from the side of the road between my house and Transylvania.
The stretch includes North Forbes and West Main, and I fill my bags before I get halfway to campus. Then my students and I classify and weigh what I have found. Although the amount of trash over the one- to two-mile stretch doesn’t seem impressive, the numbers add up quickly when my students extrapolate how much trash is likely to be on all the roadways in Fayette County.
Plastic dominates the landscape — wrappers and plastic ware, lids and straws from 32-oz drink containers, plastic bottles and jugs, and hosts of other things that fall out of people’s cars as they drive along.
Plenty of paper and Styrofoam are also strewn on the street. The paper itself will degrade into fairly non-toxic stuff, but the dyes and ink used on them will run off into our streams and eventually into the water supply. The Styrofoam, as with any plastic, photodegrades (gets broken down by light) into smaller bits and simple chemical compounds. These chemicals will run off and pollute our streams, if they don’t find their way into the bellies of the local wildlife first. Having large quantities of trash on the side of the road is no good in anyone’s books.
Much of that roadside garbage could be turned into something far more useful: money. Every pound of material that our recycling center segregates stays out of a landfill and can actually earn some money for the county and several local businesses. They send milk jugs to Somerset, Ky., and colored plastics go to Troy, Ala., to make new items like plastic chairs. Plastic soda bottles go to Florence, Ky., to make plastic strappings, while cardboard and fiberboard are sent to Memphis, Tenn., where they are reused. Steel goes to a steel mill in Tube City, Ill., aluminum cans go to Berea, Ky. — and the list goes on. Aluminum is the best moneymaker for our recycling center, which would earn about $700 for the amount of aluminum that is likely littering the streets of Fayette County on any given day. Perhaps that amount of money sounds like a lot, or perhaps it doesn’t, but it should definitely make someone think twice before he or she throws a soda can out the car window.
Here’s where the economic opportunity lies. My students are amazed to learn that we actually could recycle Styrofoam if it weren’t cost-prohibitive to transport a material that is mostly air. We need local businesses to use recycled materials, such as Styrofoam, plastic wrappers and the myriad plastics beyond the bottles and jugs our recycling center already takes.
These materials are unrecyclable because of the economics of segregating and shipping, not because of science and technology. Some cities do recycle these materials, and Lexington could join them. Anyone who has read “Cradle to Cradle” by Michael Braungart and William McDonough will likely agree that we should mine those materials instead of discarding them in a landfill or letting them degrade and contaminate the water we drink. Doing so could help further the image of our wonderful city by protecting and beautifying the environment. It could also create meaningful jobs for people, boost local economic development and reduce our reliance on foreign oil, because nearly all of these plastics are made from petrochemicals.
We recycle quite a lot in this city, and creating these local businesses would help us recycle even more. The amounts of Styrofoam and plastics that litter the roadside pale in comparison to the amounts we throw away in our Herbies each week. I teach my students that our society can be truly sustainable when economic development, social justice and environmental stewardship act in concert. Developing such local businesses would take us a step further in that direction.