Letter: Once-a-week trash smell being exaggerated

Sunday, Aug. 26, 2007 | 1:03 a.m.

In response to the pilot program being considered by Republic Services, I would like to give my opinion. I am one of the 2 percent of Las Vegans who recycles. We recycle plastic, paper and even our cardboard food packaging. Because of the volume of recyclables that are produced by my household, I needed to make my own recycle container by converting a 30-gallon trash can and marking it as containing recyclables (plastics, metal). This system works and the trash man picks it up every two weeks. Since we recycle so many items, our volume of trash is greatly reduced and we end up only putting our trash out once a week. Now some people may not like doing this and will cite the smell as a factor. Well, I run a daycare, and I have a 2-year-old daughter, and we produce lots of dirty diapers. Yeah, smelly. These diapers are taken out daily, and are put in a regular trash can and are taken out once a week. Sure, there is some smell but only if you are right next to the can with the lid off. Having smelly trash is absolutely no excuse for people not participating in this program. Many people have written in stating that they couldn't imagine what the smell would be like. That is just it, they are indeed imagining a horrific smell when in fact leaving trash for a week, even dirty diapers, does not result in a horrific smell, just a bad but tolerable one, which is how all our trash smells on any given day. The money saved by the new proposal of once-a-week trash pickups and once-a-week recycle pickups will result in, I hope, programs implemented by Republic Services to educate residents of Las Vegas. We all need to be made aware that we are responsible for every piece of trash we throw out, whether it stays in the landfill one week or 10,000 years.

Frances Lovesee,