Recycling and the Profit Motive

Twelve Oaks Lodge is a senior citizens residence. One of our ladies has been collecting papers for her church; many of us have contributed. The papers were then sold to a recycling center.

It now appears that this center is offering such a reduced rate that the church cannot even cover the cost of handling the loads. The reason given for this low rate was that there was a glut of used paper.

We read and hear a great deal about ecology, pollution and saving forests. But in the final analysis, there seems to be a greater interest in the profit motive.

As every schoolboy knows, paper pulp is made from trees. One has only to imagine how many trees are felled in order to continually renew thousands of tons of telephone directories, print formidable amounts of junk mail, provide high-grade paper for governmental or bureaucratic correspondence, etc., when recycled paper would serve equally well.

It is discouraging that a cause that is globally beneficial is beyond the reach of ordinary citizens because there’s no percentage in it for business.

TERRY HILL

La Crescenta