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America's garbage dilemma comes around.

by Sam Martin

To understand the national obsession with saving our garbage we have only to look to the pages of the Seguin Gazette, a newspaper in South Texas. "Nothing is junk - save all scrap metal so it can be recycled," a reporter urges. "In multicar families use only one car ...and take up walking. [Do] your grocery shopping twice a week instead of every day, and if you live close to the market area walk and take your own basket." The story would read like a how-to brochure on environmentally sustainable living in the 21st century - if it weren't an announcement for the War Effort, circa 1942.

During World War II the fact that saving empty toothpaste tubes would keep the country's water and air clean wasn't of imminent concern. Recycling for the war was simple: Save now, have a better world to live in later. Sixty years later, has the message changed so much?

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

It's no secret that the United States is the most wasteful country on the planet. We dispose of 210 million tons of municipal waste every year, and the yearly costs of that disposal is just shy of $45 billion. Combine residential and business garbage with the truckloads of industrial waste produced in the U.S. and we have an annual pile of trash weighing 12 billion tons. Not surprisingly, what we do with our detritus has become a war of its own.

America's most recent wake-up call to the mess it was mak ing came in 1987, when a trash barge called the Mobro 4000 motored up and down the Eastern seaboard looking for a landfill in which to dump 3,200 tons of New York State's garbage. During thousands of miles of fruitless wandering (the Mobro eventually returned to port, still fully loaded), trash became a headline attraction in newspapers and television stations all over the country.

While waste was news, each story prompted more and more people to question the ethics behind throwing away so much at one time. In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took the issue seriously enough to recommend that 25% of municipal trash be recycled by the end of a five-year program.

Twelve years of good effort, endless debates and considerable expense have actually made a difference. As of 1995 27% of the country's waste was recycled (compared to 6.3% in 1960), and projected numbers for this year report Americans reusing 30% to 35% with recovery rates for paper exceeding 45%.

Nonetheless, what does recycling do for us on a day-to-day basis? It certainly keeps us busy. We set up elaborate sorting systems in our homes - with glass in one bin and paper in the next, rinsing here and bundling there upon penalty of fines or worse: missing the pickup date! And what about the fact that recycling itself is a dirty business, with loud collection trucks plying the predawn streets? It's expensive, as is normal waste disposal, and in increasingly mandatory fashion our taxes are used to pay for an industry that struggles to turn a profit. Is recycling worth it?

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