Spring cleaning should be an everyday activity
Free trash day. Those are words to celebrate in Santa Fe County. A free day at the Buckman Road Recycling and Transfer Station and Caja del Rio Landfill offers people the opportunity to take unsightly waste and dump it without spending a cent. There will be a line and likely a wait, but free dumping days are something we need more of to reduce the increasing and unsightly trash problem locally and across the state.
The Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Agency hosts free trash days during the year, so the event on Saturday is nothing new. With COVID-19, people are asked to limit dumping to one load, have only two people a vehicle, wear a facemask and keep 6 feet away from others. Hours are 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
People can dump garbage, items such as large appliances, furniture, mattresses, remodeling or building materials for free, but there will be a fee for green waste, household hazardous waste, tires and electronic waste.
At the same time individuals will be trekking their trash to the dump, the community has work to do out and about around town.
Saturday is also the annual cleanup day for the city sponsored by Keep Santa Fe Beautiful. On this day, people get together to beautify their city, with bags and pickup provided. Details on how to participate — sign-up is required — are at keepsantafebeautiful.org.
But spring cleaning is not enough to eliminate New Mexico’s increasingly trashy state. Governments — state, county, tribal and local — have to rededicate resources to reversing the mess we find ourselves in.
Not just because appearance is important in a state that attracts millions of visitors a year, but because people who live here yearround deserve better — and so do the land and water, both of which are polluted when illegal dumping is out of control.
The state has said it will be reviving the once-popular “Toss no Mas” campaign to encourage motorists to stop throwing trash out the window. Highway cleanup is costly, with the state Department of Transportation spending $3.2 million on picking up litter in budget year 2020, with similar expenses expected in 2021. That’s money that could be better spent.
Last month, a story about the trash problem by reporter Rick Ruggles (“‘Toss No Mas,’ New Mexico implores motorists,” March 7) elicited a number of responses from readers with ideas to tackle trash.
Bruce Smith wrote, “A statewide systemic solution is necessary to finance legal disposal in a more equitable way (fees charged at the point of sale for instance) that requires a prepayment for all items that have packaging. The prepayment would help pay for collection and disposal for all residents.”
Other readers asked for new attempts to pass bottle-bill legislation, which offers consumers a fee for every can or bottle they return. Instead of littering the sidewalks or roadsides, the waste is returned.
If such measures continue to be blocked at the state level, cities and counties should consider such ordinances. For New Mexico, this would be less about recycling and more about getting trash off the streets.
There is support for increased fines, too, at least among our readers, with Richard Reinders writing: “In Colorado it is $1,000 and enforced. I would add 30 days of community service picking up trash to the fine.”
Beating back the trash must be coordinated, with dual efforts to stop new trash from piling up and other initiatives to pick up what’s already here. From refrigerators in arroyos to miniatures along streets to plastic bags flapping in the wind, garbage is winning.
Everything from providing more trash receptacles on highways and increasing pickup, to increasing state and local fines for litter and changing how landfills are financed must be on the table. Saturday may be Santa Fe’s annual spring cleanup — but let’s not limit cleaning to one day. Make eliminating and reducing waste something New Mexicans do every day, part of the Land of Enchantment way of being.