ALASKANS HAVE THE RIGHT IDEA ABOUT CARING FOR THE LAND

I lived in a small town near Juneau, Alaska, for 10 years and had never heard of shipping garbage to Washington until now. Virtually all Alaskans believe that the land is very precious and realize that we are responsible for whatever we bring into it.

Before anything was accepted into the landfill in my town, we recycled and composted as much as possible. Everyone was highly discouraged from bringing nonrecyclable items like plastic bags and Styrofoam to the landfills. People paid by the amount of garbage they brought in. Anyone misusing the service was staked out and left for the bears. Well, maybe not literally, but we felt very strongly about bringing trash to our land.

Tin food cans, aluminum, cardboard, Nos. 1 and 2 plastics, cardboard, plus other metals; roofing, old bikes, even cars were stockpiled and shipped to the Mainland for recycling. All of these items were first made available for everyone to reuse. I have a roof on my house in Alaska because of this practice.

What is it about Maui that we love? Certainly it’s not the plastic bags at the stores. Our county and state officials have the power to ban items from getting here in the first place and seeing to it that what does get here actually gets recycled.

We can’t just ship problems away. We must do our best to prevent them from being here in the first place.

Pam Wolf

Haiku

Printed Maui News, August 31, 2004