To the editor:

A little over a year ago, my wife and I took a chance and moved to Lawrence from our home state of Wisconsin. While the transition has not exactly been an easy one, we both really like living in Lawrence. In any place, it’s the people who make a community great, and the citizens of Lawrence seem genuinely nice, collectively enlightened and tolerant.

But there is a citywide issue that perhaps people are too tolerant of — namely, that a city as progressive as Lawrence still has no curbside recycling plan Yes, there is the Wal-Mart recycling center that you can drive to (and we do about every three weeks), as well as private individuals who will pick up your bottles and cans for a fee, but that just doesn’t seem good enough for this town. My wife and I moved from a city of similar size that has had an efficient, bi-weekly recycling program for many years now.

As the manager of the Half Price Books bookstore, I feel especially bad that we have not been able to establish a recycling connection for worn-out paperbacks, hardbacks, and magazines here in lovely Lawrence. Happily for us, we’ve just found a recycler in Topeka who has been contracted to recycle our books.

This, then, is an appeal to our local legislators, city officials, and citizens to come together and implement a recycling program that truly works for the city of Lawrence and supports the health of our community, environment, and world, which are one in the same anyway.

Jef Leisgang,

Lawrence