Hello Gaston! Sorry I missed you last week. Boy, it was a whirlwind up here at the landfill. We had the Commissioner School students tour and see what we do. If you know of students that are interested heavy equipment operations to managing data, learning about systems management, sustainability, carbon credits, engineering, or working with people to solve problems, Solid Waste is an exciting career field with many pathways and a lot of variability – no day is ever the same.

Many people balk when they find out my office is at the landfill. “Oh goodness!” they say. (What they imply is “How terrible!”) But what they don’t know is that my daily view of a mountain of garbage is a very real reminder of how much work I must do as the Recycling Coordinator to promote, encourage, and try to make easier for folks like you to divert useful material out of the landfill. Seeing the consequences of our choices (in a line of garbage trucks and trailers dropping load upon load of unwanted objects) makes me think very differently about what I buy, how I buy it, and where it will end up when I am done with it. Let’s have a little kitchen table conversation about recycling and get our heads wrapped around making some positive changes.

My social media algorithm brings up a lot of recycling videos to my media feeds. It saddens me to see the stories of plastic waste, electronic waste, and textile waste piling up in developing countries. It feels like a problem out of our control. As global citizens we all have a part to play in what we do with our trash, and we have a lot of work to do.  Know that our materials in Gaston County stay stateside and go to recycling facilities when it is not overly contaminated. That’s why it’s very important to ask questions and check before you toss something that you think  is recyclable in the bin. That’s why we have site attendants at all our convenience site locations.

From extraction or raw materials to product development, to marketing, to re-use before landfill – there are plenty of points along the way for industry and society to do better. But sometimes there simply is no economic viability in the recycled material. Why is there no market? For one, recycled material costs more to a producer (I will unpack that), secondly the types of material that are deemed “recyclable” by a manufacturer may be much harder to process than our typical recovery facilities can handle (infrastructure is needed) and thirdly, the feedstock can be unpredictable (contamination can be mitigated with lots of vigilance).

Let’s start with how “expensive” recycling is. Virgin material costs are subsidized. Subsidies come  from the government (affected by industry lobbying), and by not correctly by accounting for environmental costs down the line. When oil is extracted (for plastic resin), there are harmful pollutants produced and the reduction of a finite resource. These costs are not reflected in the price of the oil or later passed off in the costs of plastic – we know because virgin plastic is cheap. There are no costs for cleaning the air, cleaning the water for accidental spills, no human health considerations, and certainly no mitigation for the warming climate. Additionally there are taxable write-offs for oil and gas programs making it very lucrative for investors. By contrast, recycled materials have an uphill battle as the feedstock is unpredictable in quality and quantity (but could be remedied by the products themselves and better infrastructure). I know we need both incentives and punishments to get the system to work right. In Gaston County, we incentivize recycling, but you have to recycle the right things which means checking the contents of your bin, or else our system fails.

We allow you to throw up to 10 bags of household garbage away for free if you simply separate your recyclables at our convenience sites (bring two bags worth at minimum). Put out recycling bins at your next cookout or party. It’s not that hard to toss the bottle into the right bin, but you have to give your guests the opportunity. If that’s not enough incentive, consider the law you break when you put plastic bottles or aluminum cans into a North Carolina landfill. It’s illegal, so, let that weigh on your law-abiding conscience. The recycling system throughout our country needs innovation and capital improvements to be more efficient. We need industry standards to include post-consumer recycled content in our products. We need to hold producers responsible for their packaging and make them accountable in closing the loop – to be able to return those materials to them easily. We may not be able to fix it all yet, but we certainly can control what is in our homes and be responsible for what we can do locally. Do your part and recycle right.

Call the recycle hotline 704-922-7729 or send me an email anytime at solidwaste@gastongov.com.

Becca Hurd is the recycling coordinator for Gaston County.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: YOUR TURN: Do your part and recycle right.