Craig Barry is the executive director of the Ketchum-based Environmental Resource Center.
By CRAIG BARRY
The Environmental Resource Center applauds a potential move by the county to assume management of the recycling center from the Southern Idaho Solid Waste District. The ERC has been working hard, in partnership with Blaine County, over the past six years to raise awareness about recycling and improve the sustainability of our overall solid waste system. Because of this partnership, there have been record-setting increases over the past several years in our community's recycling amounts, which, in turn, generated a record $139,955 in recycling revenues.
These figures not only show the effectiveness of outreach efforts but they also show the level of commitment that community members have for recycling. Under Blaine County management, the ERC feels confident that our community will have a level of managerial leadership that is reflective of and responsive to our community's strong support for recycling.
Such a move could improve recycling, as Commissioner Larry Schoen states. But these improvements will only come about if recycling is seen as part of a whole and sustainable solid waste system. If not, it becomes easy to lose perspective and not see the "solid waste" forest for "recycling" trees.
To maintain some sense of perspective, our community needs a comprehensive solid waste management plan, which is required for local governments in most of the country. We currently spend some $2 million annually on solid waste yet do not have a strategic plan that helps guide decision making. This plan would help balance an array of community goals, including energy and natural resource conservation, cutting carbon emissions, supporting "green" jobs and addressing economic concerns.
In 2006, the ERC urged the county to draft such a plan. After an initial start, the plan was put off until the county could begin renegotiating its agreement with the solid waste district. These renegotiations are supposed to begin within the next six to 12 months.
With this proposed takeover of the recycling center and the impending renegotiations of the county's agreement with the solid waste district, it is more important than ever to get a plan that speaks directly to the community's solid-waste goals and addresses them in the most effective and efficient manner possible.
Additionally, this plan can help better account for the true costs of managing our solid waste. Adopting widely recognized industry standards, called full-cost accounting, "provides a common-sense approach to identifying and assessing the cost of managing solid waste operations, and aiding decision-makers with short and long-term program planning to help identify measures for streamlining and improving operations" (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). Determining these true costs will help gain better perspective on all the services, not just recycling, that are funded from waste fees.
Recycling is working in our community and we can still do more, especially with Blaine County's new leadership.
But it is critical that we not lose sight of the forest for the trees. We must not break apart our solid waste in ways that ignore each part's relationship to the whole. After all, if you recycle a ton of aluminum cans, then you're not throwing them in the trash, and if you throw away a ton of aluminum cans, then you're not recycling them. What happens with various material streams are all interdependent and a solid-waste management plan accounts for all these relationships.
The ERC applauds this new development in county leadership at the recycling center. We look forward to strengthening our community's sustainability and urge the county to craft a strategic solid-waste management plan.
To find out more about what can be recycled locally and where, please visit the ERC's Web site at www.ercsv.org or call the ERC at 726-4333.
