Editorial: Recycling’s benefits are wasted here

Wednesday, May 26, 2004 | 8:49 a.m.

This week U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt chose Las Vegas to kick off a nationwide campaign to encourage malls and shopping centers to take greater advantage of recycling. Leavitt made his push for a cleaner environment in Las Vegas because the International Council of Shopping Centers was holding its convention here. Nevertheless, in light of Nevada's abysmal record on recycling, the irony of Leavitt's announcement here was inescapable.

The EPA estimates that nearly 30 percent of the waste in the United States is recycled (neighboring California does even better, recycling about half of its waste), but Nevada recycles just slightly more than 10 percent of its waste. It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 1991 Nevada set a target of recycling 25 percent of its waste by 1995, but we've never come close. "Nevada as a state is pretty far behind most other states in terms of waste recycled," Adrienne Priselac, an environmental protection specialist in the EPA's Western region waste reduction office in San Francisco, told Sun reporter Stephen Curran. "They're probably last or pretty close to last. But we (the EPA) are doing everything we can to help Nevada."

We appreciate the EPA's offer of support, but we're not convinced that Nevada government officials, business leaders and the operators of Republic Services, which has a government-sanctioned monopoly on garbage collection in the Las Vegas Valley, are willing to make a genuine commitment to recycling. While there is commercial-grade recycling in Las Vegas that involves malls and shopping centers, recyclable and nonrecyclable materials are collected in the same garbage bin. A Republic facility, using a conveyor belt, separates regular garbage from recyclables, but the EPA says recycling on the back-end this way increases the chances that recyclable items simply will get thrown away.

Furthermore, one of the biggest problem areas is that Republic doesn't offer recycling at apartment complexes, where a large portion of Las Vegans live. The fact that recycling is voluntary and not mandatory also dampens participation. It is shameful that we're unwilling to do something as simple and easy as recycling, which can do such much to protect our environment.