Editorial: Wrong approach to recycling

Monday, Aug. 20, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

The Clark County Commission is to consider on Tuesday a plan to increase recycling across the Las Vegas Valley - one that includes a provision, which commissioners rejected last year, that cuts twice-weekly trash pickups to once a week.

A story by the Las Vegas Sun on Friday says the plan being proposed by the Southern Nevada Recycling Advisory Committee has three options that would be tested in three different areas for one year. County commissioners then would decide which, if any, of the options to apply valleywide.

All three options call for replacing the three small bins into which residents now separate their recyclables with a single large can, into which they would toss all items for recycling. But that is where the similarities end.

As the Sun's Tony Cook reports, one option calls for leaving the scheduled pickups as they are and simply switching to the new containers. A second option would retain trash pickups twice a week and increase recycling to once a week.

A third option, however, is identical to the plan that the advisory committee pitched last year, which called for increasing recycling pickup to once a week, instead of every two weeks, and reducing trash pickup to once a week, instead of twice a week.

County commissioners rejected that proposal last year because it would have forced residents to keep garbage-filled cans sitting around for a week at a time - a recipe for stench in the hot desert sun.

Commissioners had told the advisory committee to find better options. Apparently, the committee has crafted a couple of those. But for some reason members still insist on advocating a plan that increases recycling at the cost of reducing trash pickup.

Republic Services has a lock on the valley's trash pickup through long-term contracts, leaving communities with no choice but to use Republic. It is, therefore, Republic's responsibility to improve its service by making recycling easier and picking it up more often without reducing other services. Anything less should be scrapped.