Conserving Resources

As an elementary school principal, I’ve always held regularly scheduled drives at my school to collect paper and aluminum. Sure, we made a little money from the drives, but perhaps most important was the educational benefit for the students of helping conserve the earth’s resources and learning that paper and metal can be reused.

Now it seems we must educate the adult population too. Many thanks, therefore, for Kevin Roderick’s well-researched article, (Metro, Aug. 9), a fine contribution to the educational process needed for public support of recycling.

While we await the recycling plan for Los Angeles, as individuals we can begin recycling efforts immediately:

1. We can use the glass collection bins stationed at some markets.

2. Papers and aluminum cans should be donated to local school drives or dropped off in appropriate bins.

3. As consumers, we can try to make environmentally responsible decisions, i.e., refusing to buy over-packaged goods and minimizing our use of plastic disposables, since they never completely degrade. We should always ask for paper when given the choice at the supermarket checkout. (Think of the Europeans who reuse the same string bags for years!)

4. And we can urge our City Council to get on with the mandatory recycling plan--our few available dumps are filling up quickly!

Recycling really isn’t difficult once it becomes a habit pattern. And we need to keep in mind that recycling not only will help keep us from being buried in our own refuse, but it will save our earth’s resources for our children and future generations--we must stop throwing away their future.

NORENE MOORECHARNOFSKY

Granada Hills