Everyone’s duty to help

The Recycling Council of B.C. (RCBC)

Recycling Hotline is reporting that it has received just shy of 70,000 calls in 2006, more than double the 32,000 calls received in 2000.

That’s good news for this province, the residents that live here and our world in general. Recycling waste admittedly is not always easy and often comes with its own set of problems.

In Prince Edward Island for instance, the government’s multi-million dollar Waste Watch program, comes complete with compost and garbage bins, as well as blue-bag pick-up. The collectors there even act as garbage police and if the wrong object shows up in the garbage or compost, a rejection sticker is put on the bin, and if it keeps happening, the garbage police will come by for a chat.

Residents predictably are always lamenting about the work involved in washing cans, bottles, removing labels and making sure that staples are removed from cardboard, plastic removed from tissue boxes and plastic liners taken out of cereal boxes. There are pages of what’s allowable in each bag and in each container.

The process is quite tedious and costly especially for those who live in apartments who must try and find room for the storage of all these bluebags and seniors often struggle trying to drag their bins down to the curb especially in a few feet of snow.

In Iqaluit, Nunavut recycling takes on a whole new meaning, as compost just doesn’t compost in the freezing land north of 60 and plastic bags and bottles have to sit for months waiting for the ice to clear so it can be shipped at very high costs to the south for recycling.

The B.C. government is in the process of putting together some kind of program to deal with e-waste, namely the millions of old computers, tv’s etc. that we collect in our homes which have created their own kind of toxic hell.

The process of trying to keep ahead of waste is time consuming and costly. But, it has to be done.

We all created the problems associated with global warming, we are all paying the price and we all need to do something about it.

Residents throughout B.C. can call the toll-free Recycling Hotline for information Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1-800-667-4321 B.C. wide or 604-732-9253 (604 RECYCLE) in the Lower Mainland.

So pick up that phone!

Now!

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