WATERLOO REGION AND ONTARIO RECYCLING

The third part in the "Trash" series was published today in the K-W Record. The title on page A10 is "Dollars and sense in recycling". This article gives the nuts and bolts including the challenges in recycling our garbage. A big problem is and always has been finding marlets for our recyclables. Other issues include citizens' underuse of the blue boxes . Thes last two issues seem counterintuitive but there it is. One of the points that I took from this article was the lack of but need for EPR which stands for Extended Producer Responsibility. This would require legislation from our provincial government to force manufacturers to take a greater responsibilty for the final resting place or end use of their products and packaging. To date this concept is used in Europe but not here. Also of the 3 R's namely Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, while all important, the first Reduce has not been receiving enough attention. EPR would address this but also consumer choices to purchase items with less volume of packaging would also help.