Recycling would seem to be a no-brainer
It wasn't so long ago that the news was full of cities trying to find someplace, anyplace, to send their garbage.
One man's waste is not another man's gold it would seem.
Barges, trucks, trains full of garbage couldn't find a home as states were full up.
Each man, woman and child produces four pounds of trash each day. Government agencies estimate that includes paper and cardboard (40 percent), yard waste (18), metals (nine), plastic (eight) and other products.
More than 70 percent is buried directly in the ground.
Estimates for Kansas and Missouri range from 70-80 percent while Oklahoma sends 99 percent of its trash to landfills, according to various surveys, with only Mississippi recycling less.
"Cheap and plentiful" landfill space is our excuse. Most of us seem content to just dump it.
We won't be motivated to do anything different until it becomes too expensive.
And what does happen to those landfills over time?
Buried items sometimes have a tendency to rise to the surface with time and the shifting earth.
Other well-documented problems with landfills raise concerns over seeping waste that enters the ground and eventually our water sources. Toxic materials and chemicals can also result in air-borne contaminants. And there are incidents of fires breaking out with landfills, some of which are near to radioactive and other hazardous waste.
Oklahoma has been dealing with these issues on a daily basis, where millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent in an effort to remediate the effects of years of mining waste.
For many states, we lack the leadership at the governmental level to change this.
Few cities nationally have any recycling efforts and the state itself has set no goal or initiative to reduce our waste.
For those of us who do have access to curbside recycling services, only one in five residents recycles.
We may not have curbside recycling but in Vernon County we do have an option.
There are recycling bins in Nevada on Colorado Street for everything from mixed paper to plastic, cardboard, tin and glass.
The location is open on set hours Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and the first Saturday of the month. Visit http://www.vernoncountymo.org/?page_id=1001 for more information.
That's a far sight better than many of our neighboring states.
But we can do more.
There are still many of us who seem to be content to dump used motor oil or paint down the storm drain, to pour out household cleaners and solvents in the sink, to fill the garbage cans with paper.
Until we refuse to live with our waste and change our "out of sight, out of mind" mentality, we will continue to be just plain dirty.
Each of us can do our part to change that, by changing what we do -- reduce, recycle, and reuse, and demanding clean water, clean air, and a healthy state.
The alternative may seem acceptable but in the end, we all pay, for higher disposal costs, higher energy costs, and higher health costs.