Around Town: Drive to recycle fuels one question -- Was it worth it?
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It's so big and so old, you'd think it would be able to take care of itself, but no, not this planet.
I didn't need the 40th anniversary of Earth Day to persuade me that people are capable of both messing up and cleaning up this place. I grew up in New York in the 1960s, when the dead-fish float was part of any Hudson River sightseeing excursion.
Now I've settled in Western Pennsylvania, where smog killed 20 people in Donora in 1948, where Pittsburghers of a certain age can remember when Downtown streetlights had to stay on all the smoke-filled day, and where we've cleaned our air and water enough to host international conferences and bass tournaments.
It's worth a little trouble to keep the place livable. So I find myself asking questions I know my father never had, such as: How much yard debris must I cram in the station wagon before it makes sense to make a six-mile round trip to the drop-off center?
I faced that Monday morning. The city will pick up yard debris curbside on Saturday, May 22, but that's almost four weeks away. Two Christmas trees had been lying in the back of our yard since January. (One was a neighbor's -- why, I can't remember.) My wife would like to commence gardening and needed them out of the way.
PG STORE
I could have left both trees at the curb; the city has bulk pickup each week now. But condemning Christmas trees to the landfill seemed too inglorious an end, given a reasonable alternative.
I couldn't fit both trees in our wagon, so I left the bigger one at the curb and put the other in the back of the car along with two 30-gallon paper bags of yard debris and other dead flora. Fully loaded with rotting vegetation, I drove three miles to the West End drop-off.
Along the way, I wondered what the rule of thumb is for this sort of errand. I like getting my jeans dirty as much as the next guy, but why burn fossil fuels and send more oil dollars to the Arabs, Venezuelans or Canadians unless the environmental benefit is clear?
Bob McKinley, executive director of PA CleanWays, laughed when I asked if there was a rule of thumb. He's from Fulton County in south-central Pennsylvania, where fewer than 15,000 people inhabit a county of 438 square miles -- and share just one recycling center. His parents make a 30-mile round trip to it each month, but Mr. McKinley couldn't say how many cans and bottles they must haul to ensure an environmental win.
First Published April 27, 2010 12:00 am
