To the editor:

I don’t want to burst the city’s recycling bubble, but the 50 tons of recycled material collected is not going to be an accurate number for any analysis of how the recycling system is keeping trash from the landfill. Homeowners that were using Deffinbaugh’s recycling system and the mom-and-pop recycling collectors were keeping tons of waste from the landfill. I am sure that many of the homeowners stored their recyclable material until their blue bin was delivered, I know we did. So did our neighbor. And it took us eight weeks to fill that monster. So any numbers coming from the initial recycling rollout will definitely be skewed.

If the city really wants to cut waste going to the landfill, get businesses involved in the recycling program. And I am not talking about just cardboard. If they are not included, the recycle numbers and waste tonnage going to the landfill will not show much change. The only thing different will be the recycling collector, and those beautiful blue bins.