Ecology Lady (1978)

[Music] problem how to get rid of 31 billion dollars worth of container materials and used packages every year 300,000 tons of aluminum can and a total of 65 billion cans 36 billion glass containers how to simplify and economize on solid waste collection and disposal how to recycle these valuable resources solution start a recycling center here on a gloomy rainy Saturday morning a recycling center is being established by a group of environmentally oriented volunteers on a shopping center parking lot at Tyson's Corner in Fairfax County Virginia it's sponsored by the Vienna Virginia Environmental Council the rust and environmental movement the Great Falls Civic Association and the drains bill environmental force question will it work can a group of volunteers organize a recycling program keep it going and remain solvent [Music] it's now five weeks later the words out citizens have begun to make a Saturday morning habit of their family visit to the Tyson's Corner recycling center recycling is big today the environmentalists are all for it municipal officials fighting the solid waste battle are all for it but somehow it doesn't seem quite real it's a dream an ideal which hasn't yet materialized perhaps the little local recycling center operated by eager volunteers will spark the program and get it off the ground on a large scale this is our ecology Lady Mary character coordinator of the Vienna environmental council a few weeks ago Mary had never crushed a can or broken bottles with a sledgehammer but in the last five weeks she's learned a lot it's worthwhile you go home at night you feel like you've really put in a good day's work and there's a satisfaction in that but there are cynics who disbelieve experience dealers in secondary materials know how hard it is to get a market for recycled materials how expensive transportation and processing our industrial practices are difficult to change citizen cooperation is uncertain when personal inconveniences involved today's facts are disconcerting 6% of aluminum cans are being recycled Kin Kin recycling is insignificant we're starting to recycle glass but the program is still in its infancy and it's predicted that the returnable bottle will be obsolete in five years only about 5% of our newsprint is being reclaimed so you want to start a recycling center here are the hard facts from a gal who's operating one Mary character this is a scene we call recycling in Northern Virginia on a hot spring morning we have a coalition of environmental groups here who have come out and they're breaking glass they're collecting newspapers they're smashing aluminum cans and all of this will be sent to various factories around the country for recycling our glass is shipped all the way to Baltimore Maryland where it will be melted down and made into new glass for bottle building materials glass fault road materials our newspapers we sell to a firm in Washington DC they take it and make new newsprint out of it they make cardboard other building the Kalu minim is a valuable resource and the aluminum will be melted down and remade into aluminum products there's a lot of work involved here we're normally short-handed in our projects many people talk about doing something about the environment but not many of them show up on a weekend here now what we're trying to do is involve more of the citizenry not only in bringing us their items for recycling but also when they bring us the items for recycling to stay a minute with us here and help us work on this project it's very eye-opening the young people haven't turned out in the numbers we had hoped they would the high school students seem interested in it but after a few weeks they just haven't shown up as they did to begin with we have many problems in organizing all of this it a non-profit group here and we find ourselves in the hole after about five weeks of operation we hope by the end of the month that we will be the whole making a little money to pay for some of our equipment that we have and also to buy more barrels some of the other projects that we have going around in this area are right now standing still because all of our capital is in this operation now recycling as such is rather new in this part of the country and we need a little bit of help from the manufacturers and the trucking companies and people such as these we have lots of problems involved in this recycling some of the main ones which might not seem very large are the fact that many of the bottles we receive have this metal ring on them and it takes quite a bit of time to take that off we have to separate our glass into brown and green which is time consuming and uses up many of our barrels and we think this is a nice color it's called blog green and it's a mixture of the brown and green and if we could ever get people used to using a bottle like this we would save ourselves quite a bit of work in recycling this glass we've run into problems with people wanting to bring us ten cans this is a real pain in the neck for us the can companies run full-page ads in the newspaper saying that they will take the can and it sounds good in print but when you come out here you find that we have to pay for the trucks to haul these cans there are ICC regulations governing trucking salvaged materials across state lines for volunteer groups some of these problems are just hard to overcome now we hope some time to be able to take the ten cans they don't pay enough right now for us to be able to afford to truck them out of here and so people bring us cans and we have to make them angry when we say no we just can't possibly take them now we don't have the money or the manpower to ship them up there we've had problems in getting help out here with some of our projects we've contacted many local groups in this area and they want to bring us their glass they think this will help us and in a way it will but we need the manpower when they bring the glass out and we need the help we have many groups contacting us asking how they can go on in their areas and recycle they're going to run into a lot of the obstacles we have with the manufacturers such as the ICC regulation involving interstate transport of salvageable materials these are almost impossible to overcome sometimes it costs quite a bit to get a license to haul materials and luckily we're in with another group who's been able to solve some of this and Trucks hourglass for us the manufacturers could help us more by pushing them the returnable bottles instead of so much push on the non-returnable it's all well and good to recycle bottles but it seems pretty wasteful to use a very good bottle once and then break it up melt it down and make a new bottle out of it it just doesn't seem right to us we're doing very well with our newspapers we've collected some 20 tons of newspapers in the last five weeks and about seven tons of glass and I would say around 200 pounds of aluminum so we're off to a real bang-up start and the only thing that will slow us down will be if our volunteers just quit showing up we get lots of letters and calls from people wondering whether it's advisable for them to start a recycling center in their area we think it is there are many areas that you can look to for help there are groups in the large cities where they have ironed out some of the wrinkles in this recycling project and they can help you find sailes places for your glass and aluminum in newspapers if not you might try the Yellow Pages in local phone directories there there help look up junkyards salvage yards find out if there is a market in your area or within a trackable distance now volunteers are a problem I mentioned that try to get several local clubs or groups to back you and make them sign up people to help you on this there are many books and articles written on recycling now try and get your hands on a few of these I would say it may look a little bleak to start with but it's a good feeling and we think it's good for the country and so I would merely say write on American industry faces a challenge which was put two verse by an employee of one of our big fan company a proposal for disposal is what we dearly crave for package items we've a blood from cradle to the grave so give us now a package new that holds the product well but after it has served that use it blows itself to hell hey Jane you look fresh would you like to go up to my car and get the jug of ice water and the paper cups off the front seat it's a green white station wagon okay I don't the water is still icy or not [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]