I would like to talk about the Coram mall, now known as the Coram green box site. This site used to have recycling. Now it has a barbed wire fence and a guard. My tax dollars go to pay that employee to ensure everything that is dropped off will ultimately go into a landfill, thus filling it faster. When it fills, we will need a new landfill and taxes will be used to pay for that as well. There used to be a considerable amount of recycling that occurred in Coram in the form of “pickers” and casual removal of goods. Now everything that is dropped there is fated to the landfill.
Whatever happened to one man’s trash is another man’s treasure? That notion is gone. Now one man’s trash is every man’s trash. This seems rather communistic. While practicing such socialist ideas, we are stepping on the American Dream. There is no longer a dream of treasure, but only trash. And we pay someone to sit all day and stare at trash to make sure at the end of the day, it is still trash. We should not live in a society where we pay people to stifle dreams while guarding trash.
We as Americans generate a lot of trash. If someone sees a way to reduce, reuse or recycle that trash, they should be able to go for it. Bring recycling containers back to these sites and allow people to haul material off if they choose. Keep the employee, if you want, to maintain cleanliness and safety. But remove the barbed wire. Coram and all the other green box sites will put less trash in the ground – something I am sure future generations will appreciate.
Clint Metzler
West Glacier