Editor:

As a child, I remember when my mother gave up sweetening her tea. To show us the impact of her decision, each time she brewed up, she would put a spoonful of sugar in a glass bowl instead of her teacup. I was amazed at how much sugar quickly filled the bowl, and as she continued the exercise, bigger containers. 

In the same way, the transfer station provides the visual for how each of us making our recycling contribution adds up. What we can keep out of the hopper is a personal challenge. Our family alone on average generates three small trash bags, four to five gallons of compost material and 10 brown grocery bags worth of recyclables per week.

Like Lauren Hadiaris, I would like to see more people incorporate eco-responsible decision-making into their daily lives; however, I do not agree that curbside pick-up is the eco-friendly way to go or that it necessarily results in less fuel costs. In 2007, our family of five gave up a second car as an experiment toward, in part, social responsibility. (It was an added incentive for my husband to ride his bike to work). Owning one car in a family with three busy kids requires advanced planning and cooperation with carpooling, but it is easier to manage than one might think. While we will probably resume having two cars once my daughter starts driving, our eco-responsible habits will without doubt continue. For example, we never visit the transfer station as a visit in and of itself; it is always combined with picking a child up at school (when the late bus isn’t an option), visiting the library or beach, returning a friend from a play date or a combination thereof.

We quickly run out of space for all of our weekly recyclables, so in addition to the transfer station, we visit the silver bullets at town hall at least once per week, sometimes twice, whenever we will pass by on another errand that has us in that part of town. Ms. Hadiaris observed that some transfer station visitors did not use the silver bullets. It might be that they had used them elsewhere earlier in the week.

If we had curbside pick-up, we would perhaps not be able to visit the Swap Shop, from which we have enjoyed many gently used toys and books over the years – toys, I might add, that do not come with plastic packaging or dozens of wire twist ties. And, in turn, we would not have had the opportunity of returning those toys or books and sharing some of our own when finished with them.

If all Cape residents consider the positive effects on the environment by combining trips to the transfer station with other errands in the same part of town – including picking up their local farm produce from Jordan’s Farm –they would essentially negate the footprint to our beloved dump, as I personally prefer to call it. Just as we love Portland Headlight, so too do we love our transfer station, a beacon of community cooperation. In my opinion, both represent our town at its best.

Alison Morton

Cape Elizabeth