Curbside service

Pilot helps put focus on vital recycling

It’s always good news when a recycling effort works. The days are long past when Americans can afford to just throw their trash into a hole in the ground.

Getting a recycling effort to work in rural Northwest Arkansas isn’t easy. Rural haulers traditionally have been focused on trash collection, not the more complex process of collecting recyclables and having a system in place where materials can be reused in a beneficial way.

It’s exciting to hear (read, actually, in this newspaper) that the Boston Mountain Solid Waste District is partnering with rural waste hauler Neighbors NWA to bring a recycling program to 400 homes in Washington and Madison counties. It’s a pilot program that started Jan. 29 and ends in June.

Customers are asked to separate bottles and cans from mixed paper, so this program requires a commitment from customers. Curbside pickup, even with requirements for separation, is less of a commitment than hauling materials to recycling centers that can be miles away. Of course, some people don’t bother with that, either.

The goal, the program’s advocates say, is to spread recycling collection to all rural residential haulers.

“Most rural residents only have trash pickup available to them,” said Taylor Osburn, sustainability coordinator at the waste district. “We want to build a program that increases recycling rates by bringing recycling service right to residents’ homes and helps smaller, rural haulers implement a sought-after service.”

Let’s hope the program takes off, but recycling programs can be hard to sustain. They’re only as good as their ability to convert materials for reuse in some fashion. And they rarely make money.

Waste is waste. It doesn’t matter if it comes from an urban location or a rural one. Approaches that appreciate a responsibility to the ecology are crucial to the future of Northwest Arkansas, where the only landfill is steadily filling up.

Growing Northwest Arkansas needs to get really good reducing waste and recycling.