County devising a four-fold rise in locals' recycling

Image by Flickr user timtakImage by 20090413-recycle.jpg Pitch in, it's for a good cause: Fewer area landfills.

The ball is rolling towards closing down Charleston County's much-disliked trash incinerator -- however, but to avoid trading noxious gas for overflowing landfills, the county is looking at how they can boost recycling -- a lot.

Fun fact: Last year San Francisco led the national average with a 70% recycling rate.Right now some 10% of the area's solid waste is recycled, but we need to get to 40% -- a number slightly above the national average.

It's obviously no small task, and The Post and Courier has how and what our leaders are planning on doing to get to 40%.

Oh, and here are some of my thoughts about the recycling plans:

It's a real tragedy that the city isn't already working more with businesses to pick up recycling on a daily basis. I see a lot of valuable cans get thrown out because businesses can't hold them for the bi-weekly trash pickup.

And, let's get some public recycling waste baskets out there. It's great that the city is putting out recycling bins for bigger events like the Cooper River Bridge Run, but come summer this city is one big bottled-water-downing festival with virtually every public trash can stuffed full of plastic bottles.

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