New recycling law takes effect today

As of today, you can't toss plastic bottles into North Carolina landfills. Since North Carolina has had recycling mandates for more than a decade, the law seems to be years too late. Every municipality of a certain size is required to offer recycling. Wilson has provided curbside pickup of recyclables since the 1990s, but I would bet that plenty of recyclables are going into trash containers and, ultimately, into landfills.

On my early-morning walks, I pass many houses where the garbage can is at the curb, but the recycling bin is nowhere to be seen. These are not cheap tenant houses, where the residents might be poorly educated or poorly informed; these are luxury homes whose residents, apparently, don't care enough to recycle.

Despite the state's two-decade emphasis on recycling, most of what we throw away goes into landfills. WRAL reports that North Carolinians send 70,000 tons of plastic bottles to landfills every year, with only about 20 percent of recyclable bottles being recycled. (I've never quite grasped the sudden popularity of bottled water sold in half-liter or 20-ounce bottles. In most cases the water is tasty, but it's not that much better than tap water, especially filtered tap water. And the wastefulness of disposing of those plastic bottles and the $1-plus price make bottled water not very sensible. Kudos to Brita, the water-filter company, for promoting bottle-it-yourself bottled water using reusable containers.)

The state has had a tough time getting people to recycle. Penalties are rare, and mandates on manufacturers or municipalities are ignored. The newspaper industry was saddled with a recycling mandate in the early 1990s, and newspapers launched campaigns to recycle newsprint. All papers had to achieve a mandated percentage of recycled content in their newsprint. But the market for recycled newsprint bottomed out. Companies couldn't sell the recycled newsprint (a small daily generates tons of wasted or unsold newsprint every day) and even had trouble giving it away.

Successful recycling will require changing the hearts and minds of consumers or, alternatively, forcing recycling through "bottle bills" that impose a refund fee on all bottles purchased. The state and municipalities need to continuously promote the advantages of recycling and support industries that accept or reuse recyclables. Ambitious state goals of reducing the solid waste stream have not been met. We have a long way to go in recycling. Today's new law will have to be enforced if it is to have any impact.