Feed Recycling Bins Instead of Landfills

As a Granada Hills resident, I oppose the expansion of Sunshine Canyon Landfill approved by the Los Angeles City Council. As a science teacher who has taken my students on field trips where we’ve seen aged oaks that will soon be gone forever, I am against this tragic use of precious land.

As a citizen of this planet, I wonder, however, how many of those who protest the expansion recycle, shop frugally, invest in an environmentally responsible manner and send their children to school with reusable lunch bags and containers. Do they realize that there is little recourse if we collectively continue to pour hundreds of thousands of tons of trash into our black bins each week? Where should all this waste be detoured?

To all those who lament the disappearance of our pristine land: When you shop, do you consider how much waste is generated by what you have just purchased? Do your children bring home their soda cans to be put into your blue bins? Do you put your potato peels and apple cores into the green bins or into the black bins? Did you serve on paper plates and plastic cups at your Super Bowl party?

Where do you think all that waste ends up?

It is time to look at the global as well as local consequences of each of our actions. Do you buy products from companies that have made valiant efforts to use recycled materials and fewer toxic chemicals? Did you know that some paper companies still produce dioxins, which are linked to cancer and pollute our water supply? Do you invest in the stock market merely for the bottom line, or do you carefully investigate if the corporations you are supporting are still using pesticides banned in the United States but permitted in foreign countries? These toxic substances affect all of us, in our air, soil, agricultural products and the water supply.

Let us look beyond our backyard and know that for each time we buy detergents with phosphates (look at the ingredients on your dishwashing detergent), or dump cleaning products down our drains, or send Johnny to school with Lunchables, we all contribute to the ills that we are so passionately protesting.

Have you seen how your kids spend money? What motivation drives their spending patterns? Do they know what an enormous economic power they are? In 1998, teenagers spent over $140 billion, and their overall impact on the economy is believed to be far greater than that.

Remember the grape boycotts? Our “save the dolphin” tuna embargo changed the way the tuna industry does business. When we choose to buy one product over another, we are voting with our money. Our dollars have more direct influence than our letters to the editor or our signs on Balboa Boulevard.

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Children can be taught that there is more to selecting products than the colorful packaging, the TV jingles and the toy inside the box. When we shop with our kids, we can choose their breakfast cereal together, showing that we do not care only about the cost, taste or nutritional value.

What can we look for that will teach our children that our dollars really make a statement? We can support those companies that strive for stronger environmental practices than federal regulations call for. We can read the labels to tell whether the packaging contains post-consumer recycled materials, and check that the package can be recycled after our use. When we teach our children that any number of gestures--from recycling cans and clothing to supporting businesses that may even surpass environmental regulations--we are teaching lifelong habits for a healthy planet and its inhabitants.

Before we shop, invest or pack lunches, we need to do some research. Online searches for “socially responsible companies” will lead us to organizations such as the Council on Economic Priorities and investment groups that suggest supporting specific “green” corporations.

We need to vote not only with our shopping dollars and our investment portfolios, but also at the voting booth on March 7. Propositions 12 and 13 aim to protect our wildlife and water. We can write to our respective federal legislators to request that they co-sponsor the Act to Save America’s Forests that is before both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

We have all the tools to act environmentally and socially responsibly, as individuals and as a community. So after you have put this article into your blue bin, make every day Valentine’s Day by sending your sweetheart an e-mail and save some space in the landfill.