This is something we’ve been discussing for quite some time at the office at Bike Pittsburgh, and we’re thrilled to see an article about it in this week’s City Paper. Far too many people get worked up about recycling, when recycling is, as William McDonough calls it, merely “less bad.” We have to go beyond recycling to address climate change, waste, and pollution. We have to consume less, use less energy, invest in energy alternatives, and give up driving those 1 or 2 miles to the local store. In short, we need to change our lifestyle. We need to invest in walkable, bikeable communities and in public transit. We need to source our materials and buy our food locally whenever possible. Time is of the essence. This is overall a matter of life and death for people, animals and plants on Earth.

So thanks City Paper and thanks Bill O’Driscoll for writing such a great piece!

APRIL 24, 2008

Downward Cycle

BY BILL O’DRISCOLL

On a Saturday morning, at the City of Pittsburgh’s recycling drop-off site in Point Breeze, you’re among the recycling bins and the true believers. The 15 dark-blue, office-cubicle-sized metal containers border the parking lot of Construction Junction, an outlet for used construction materials. Daily the cars stream in, and drivers unload the cardboard boxes, junk mail and phone books, the glass and plastic containers they’ve accumulated at home.

None of them has to do it: Pittsburgh residents have curbside “blue-bag” pickup, so many drop-off patrons are contributing materials the city doesn’t yet mandate in their neighborhoods. Some recyclers don’t even live in the city. On a recent Saturday, Rusty Chapman, a silver-haired Churchill resident, delivered four plastic bags of plastic bottles, a box of paper, a box of paperboard. She makes a similar run “at least every other week,” she says.

No one solution can fix all our environmental problems, of course. But recycling isn’t like growing your own food, or trading your car for a bike.

“I’m a green person,” says Chapman. She shops at farmers’ markets and house sales. At home, she cleans with natural products; at the office, she gathers old phone books to recycle. She cuts her lawn with a pushmower. “Everyone on the street has landscapers. They think I’m crazy.”

People like Chapman — those intent on keeping resources out of landfills — are the backbone of any recycling program, and Pittsburgh’s is showing new signs of life. This year, its Public Works department increased the number of materials its blue recycling trucks collect in two of five collection areas, adding cardboard, junk mail and other kinds of paper. Through March, tonnage had risen more dramatically than in the 16 years since the city, under state mandate, added newsprint to the list of recyclables.

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