Paper or plastic?
Every grocery-store customer has heard the question and made the choice, based on preference. For Keith Senn, it’s not that simple.
Senn, as public works supervisor, is in charge of the city’s recycling center.
“It’s a toss-up,” said Senn.
Plastic disintegrates very slowly in a landfill and paper is biodegradable, but it uses up natural resources.
“If you use paper, that’s actually a cardboard ... but then you have the tree advocates, and rightfully so,” Senn said.
For recyclers, there’s an alternative.
“Buy canvas bags and re-use them,” Senn said. “That’s probably the ecologically best choice.” Re-using bags on the next shopping trip also is an alternative.
Senn admits that recycling is his favorite part of the job.
“It’s the most fun,” he said. “It makes you feel like you’re doing something worthwhile.”
Senn advocates making good ecological choices whenever possible, and the annual records of tonnage at the landfill’s adjacent recycling center reflect the interest and effort Senn has put into his job.
“I’ve got a good staff,” Senn is quick to interject. “My foreman that works direct with the staff out there is well-versed and caught on quick.”
In 2006, the center received 2,455 tons of recyclable materials, compared to a meager 26 tons in 1989-90, when the city and the local League of Women Voters formed a partnership for recycling. The ’06 total impressed Senn.
“It was a surprise, because nationally recycling has fallen off,” he said.
A chart showing tonnage through the years shows a generally upward trend. Senn wants to take those figures higher, and said that starting young is the best way to form the recycling habit.
He talks with youngsters about the need to recycle and puts it in terms they easily can understand: Mining bauxite ore used to make aluminum cans uses substantial energy. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television set long enough to watch six half-hour episodes of their favorite television show.
“Aluminum prices are higher than I’ve ever seen them since I’ve been alive,” Senn remarked, adding that the price is around 60 cents per pound.
He encourages his children to look for recyclables as they walk in their neighborhood outside Emporia.
“We’ll walk down the road and they yell ‘Treasure!’ every time they see a beer can,” he said.
Aluminum cans are not the only treasures that make recycling worthwhile. Some large metropolitan areas are burning municipal solid waste to create energy for their cities. In Kansas, several companies used recycled papers, plastics and glass to create other products that create jobs and generate sales for their home communities.
Senn and his crew are doing their best to make it easy for area residents to “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and they are trying to educate the public about the value of recycling.
The center is open seven days a week and staffed with two or three workers.
They accept a variety of items — smashed milk cartons, tin and aluminum cans, junk mail including envelopes with cellophane windows, cardboard, newspaper, magazines, plastic pop bottles, rubber tires and clear, brown and green glass, separated.
A publication, currently being updated, lists other items the center accepts, and provides information about where to take automotive fluids, paint products, household cleaners, pest control products and other recyclable items like ammunition, appliances, furniture, scrap metal, toys, and even cats and dogs.
The city also has partnered with Emporia’s Radio Stations for a successful recycling campaign, and with the Regional Development Association on a grant to obtain recycling trailers to sit in towns throughout the county and at Dillon’s East.
Senn sees good reasons for recycling: it saves money, it often saves energy, it’s an ecologically friendly thing to do, and it frees up space that makes landfills last longer.
At $26.77 a ton — plus a surcharge based on a formula when fuel goes over $2 per gallon — recycling saves the city money it would spend hauling trash away and very often brings in money when the recycled goods are sold. Last year was a good example.
“We made $170,000 and saved $64,000,” Senn said. “That’s a lot of money.”
Not all of the recyclables bring income; the city pays for some items to be hauled away.
“It was still less than what it cost us to ship it out to a landfill,” he said.
Senn would like area residents to try recycling on a small scale and see how that affects the amount of trash taken weekly to the curb.
“If you do just one thing, I think you’ll see a reduction,” Senn said. “... It will dawn on you we all need to recycle.”