Not Easy Being Green

Kermit, the frog, may have said it best. “It is not easy being green”, especially in Lexington, Ky.

Take the issue of recycling your household materials. There are a lot of items on the approved list but not everything with the international recycling symbol is acceptable. I know that, for my family, we put out nearly 3 times as much recycling material as we do waste material. I hope that that is pretty much standard.

It takes way more effort to recycle the household electronic stuff than usual. You have to make special trips across town and you have a limited number of times per year per household. Certain items are allowed and others are not (CFL bulbs are not).

Then we have the community drop-off locations for those who do not have individual or adequate residential service. You know, the ones with the blue roll-off boxes with the small black doors, where you place all recyclable materials in the container, without separating. The map below shows the LFUCG managed locations as of this morning.

Last week the map also presented a spot (No. 2) at Sam's Club on New Circle Rd, between Liberty and Winchester Rds. Apparently the site was being either well used or vastly misused as the ground around it became a repository for things that would not fit in the container. Being a nuisance for the property owner, they asked for it to be removed.

One cannot help but notice that it results in a massive hole in the northeast quadrant of the older part of town. Compared to the rest of the community, should we be surprised that it could be so well used? Do we expect the residents there to be the type which will not recycle?

I do understand the type of corporate citizen Sam's Club wishes to be, but this may have been the wrong approach. Perhaps Costco could step in and demonstrate more of their business leadership.

In a city that touts itself as forward thinking and urging it residents to “Live Green”, this map nearly shouts that the stratified economic class living on the south and west sides of town are getting the service intended for all. The actions taken by Sam's Club and the City just appear to reinforce that notion.