Recycling Earth Day lessons

When the first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, Sonoma County was a very different landscape with a very sick Russian River, a deadened Laguna, lead-spewing automobiles, tons of highway litter and a county land use map poised for massive suburban sprawl from Petaluma to Geyserville.
Recycling was mostly unheard of and lots of people just tossed beer bottles and soda cans from car windows or filled the landfill. The idea of paying a nickel for a recycle fee was still more than a decade away.
Before that amazing day when 20 million Americans gathered at hundreds of “teach-ins” and public marches, there were no laws to protect water quality, clean air or environmental abuses. The words “ecology” and “environmentalism” were unspoken and it was another year before the federal Environmental Protection Agency was formed.
We’ve come a long way since the first Earth Day. Most of the lessons taught that day came from a younger generation of college students, anti-war activists and a first wave of Baby Boomers who were coming of age with the right to vote, to protest and ask a lot of questions. Most of those Earth Day lessons have proven indelible — but not all.
Generations born after 1970 have no idea how much our planet’s path was radically changed that day.  Who would believe a “killer fog” once killed 4,000 people in London, or a river in Ohio once caught fire? Untreated sewer water was flushed by local cities into the Russian River and on to the Pacific Ocean.
From the wake-up moment of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill to Congress’s assertive laws over vehicle fuel efficiency and endangered species protection, what took place was a miraculous watershed moment where a Republican President Nixon worked with an entrenched Democrat-controlled Congress. They convinced a war-tired population and the dominant fossil fuel industry to accept a new environmental-based language and a common mission. (Try imagining such a sweeping change of public policy and society-wide values shift taking place today under our current political leadership.)
Across Sonoma County in the years following the first Earth Day, lots of consumer habits changed, but grumbles about too much protection and land use restrictions persist to this very day. Call it a healthy dialogue. Meanwhile our river is no longer sick, the restoration of the Laguna de Santa Rosa is happening and that 1970s suburban sprawl map was stopped in its tracks, replaced by city-centered growth, open space and ag lands preservation and an open, public ocean coastline.
But is there anything wrong with this picture?
Well, yes. Read the story in this newspaper about what has happened to California’s container recycling laws and program. It seems the simplest part of our Earth Day lessons has gone bankrupt. Local recycle centers are mostly closed and millions of plastic, glass and aluminum containers are once again being left by the wayside or overflowing our landfill.
Our Earth Day legacy deserves better. How can we justify attacking climate change and reducing our carbon footprint while we mindlessly toss plastic water bottles into the trash after a single use? We opt for electric vehicles over gas-powered as the ideal, yet we are going blind about the energy waste of burying so much plastic, glass and aluminum in the landfill.
We understand the intertwined economics of manufacturing, reprocessing and public management of the container industry. But we share State Senator Mike McGuire’s disbelief that this basic CRV program lacks an easy or obvious solution. We expect quick action once local grocery stores start receiving their daily $100 penalty for nonparticipation. We learned to reuse our shopping bags. Let’s finish the Earth Day lessons and get rid of single-use containers wherever possible, too.
That would be worth a nickel, wouldn’t it?
— Rollie Atkinson