As a teacher, I practiced recycling and reusing in my classroom to save money and resources. I thought the three Rs – recycle, reuse and reduce – were powerful words to live by.
My mother was my first teacher as a little girl to show me what recycling really meant. The Texas farm girl saved newspapers for the school-paper drive. I would lie on top of the stacks of newsprint in our blue 1956 Buick, making sure they didn’t fly out the window as she turned a corner.
With the opportunities of single-stream recycling the city of Durango offers to our residents, visitors and county neighbors, we all can make a difference. Landfills have closed in La Plata County, and the results are hauling trash farther distances by municipal governments. Recycling cuts down on the amounts trucked to our landfill in Bondad.
Nearly 8,000 nonresidents have participated in recycling at the Durango Recycle Center. Electronic recycling during the first quarter of 2014 was 46,000 pounds. Saturdays are for electronic recycling at the Tech Center site.
The city of Durango has a participation rate of 80 percent of residential customers and more than 400 commercial accounts that are recycling partners.
So, what happened to the other residential 20 percent? How can all of us make a difference? Please call 375-5004 to sign up for the blue residential recycling container.
If you are paying the residential water bill, you are paying for a recycling container. If your property manager or landlord pays the water bill, they are paying for a residential recycling container. If you are not recycling, we all are paying for the added burden to the landfill.
Make a difference. Make a phone call. Become a recycling partner with the city of Durango – or my mother will be calling you.
Sweetie Marbury is the mayor of Durango, a position rotating among members of the City Council. She was elected to the City Council in 2011 and will serve as mayor until April 2015, when she will be succeeded by now-Mayor pro tem Dean Brookie. Reach her at SweetieMarbury@DurangoGov.org.
