Nichols Hills, Oklahoma: Recycling Pickup Needed
As a Nichols Hills native and citizen, I implore the city council to provide recycling pickup.
A weekly recycling pickup offers numerous benefits; these are not limited to: (1) reduction in landfill waste, (2) conservation of natural resources, (3) prevention of pollution from collecting new raw materials, (4) conservation of energy, (5) reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global climate change, (6) sustenance of the environment for future generations, and (7) creation of new, well-paying jobs in recycling and manufacturing.
Cities, such as Arlington, Texas, have taken the initiative of offering their residents 65-gallon recycling carts, and, as a result, have seen increases in citizen participation in recycling programs by more than 50 percent. Wheeled carts are much more convenient than carrying one or several bins to the curb. Recycling carts also decrease wind-blown litter (and subsequent sewer and street pollution) and animal scavenging.
We have an obligation to reduce global climate change. It poses a serious threat to humans, and according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (along with 97 percent of climatologists), human-driven deforestation and fossil fuel emissions are the unique causes. States, such as Oklahoma, will be devastated by increasingly severe weather events. Our oceans are already acidifying, and states, like Florida, are losing their wetlands to rising seas. Recycling programs reduce the growth of climate change. When natural resources are conserved, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of those materials is avoided. And when paper products are conserved, more specifically, deforestation is reduced.
The direct benefits of recycling pickup to the City of Nichols Hills would be enormous. It may very well be not in the interest of the City to maintain its own recycling center, but it certainly is in its interest to offer recycling pickup. Citizens of Arlington, Texas, for example, each produce an average of 80 pounds of recyclable material a year; a recycling program would annually reduce Nichols Hills’s trash collection by over 400,000 pounds of recyclable garbage. If one assumes that Nichols Hills citizens produce several recyclable goods per day, that quickly adds up to over 10,000,000 recyclable goods annually.
Such a program would likely cost Nichols Hills less than 1 percent of its annual budget. The outlays of this program, while adjusting garbage revenues to remain at their current projections, would probably be covered by the savings in reduced garbage collection. As it is very likely that more than half of Nichols Hills will begin using the recycling service even by its introduction, the necessary base load almost certainly exists. Assuming the savings cannot immediately cover the costs of the program, it would likely cost citizens approximately $2 or less a year. Even if the city council nevertheless decided not to run its own recycling pickup, it should partner with Oklahoma City or Edmond to offer their pickup to Nichols Hills residents for a fee. Absent recycling pickup, Nichols Hills Earth Day is lip service. Good intentions are not enough.
