City of Norfolk finally comes around to curbside recycling beginning in August

The city of Norfolk has decided to join the 21^st Century and its efforts to halt and reverse the disastrous American trend of monumental trash accumulation by moving towards recycling. Yes, recycling, that simple and well-meaning idea that has seemingly perplexed numbers of Americans and in particular, Virginians.

Recycling rates in Virginia have improved over the years, however, and Norfolk’s announcement that it will begin providing curbside recycling to downtown residents in August along with recycling cans on streets downtown will hopefully only add to this promising upward trend in recycling across the state.

While the city of Norfolk’s move towards providing its downtown residents recycling services is worthy of adulation, this is something that should have happened years ago, saving untold amounts of resources that are now largely unrecoverable. That is, the city did the right thing, but it shouldn’t have taken so long to get on-board.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. as a whole recycled 34.7 percent of its trash in 2011. That’s 87 million out of 250 million tons of trash. We can do better.

For whatever reason or set of reasons, recycling hasn’t quite caught on as much as it needs to in a world that uses immense amounts of the planet’s resources with a global population set to grow considerably over this century.

Cities like Norfolk need to understand that a little economic pain now to set up their recycling programs will undoubtedly pay off in the long-run when resources aren’t as abundant as they are at present. The economic argument also leaves out what is to me an even more persuasive consideration: recycling will help preserve the planet for future generations to enjoy (that is, the moral argument of intergenerational justice).

Recycling, and its continued success, must be championed by not just individual states and the federal government, but more importantly by the people themselves. It is up to each of us as individuals to mindfully recycle items that can be reused to not only save a few bucks and preserve the integrity of our individual ecosystems, but to ensure that generations down the line have the same opportunities to enjoy the fullness of what our planet has to offer.