New recycling effort will benefit the Kansas City area

For tens of thousands of Kansas City area residents, recycling is a daily routine. They toss paper, plastic, aluminum, cardboard and other materials into a bin in the kitchen, laundry room or outside the backdoor and, well, that’s it.

Recycling is easy. Haulers take the materials away, where they can be used to make new products. Recycling creates jobs, conserves natural resources and reduces the amount of waste going to landfills, which are costly to maintain.

Unfortunately, recycling rates remain far below 50 percent throughout the area.

Now, the Mid-America Regional Council is promoting the Recycle More campaign to try to divert 80 percent of waste from area landfills by 2023.

One solid strategy is to increase awareness of what can be recycled. Another is to prod people to simply participate. While the average person throws out 7 pounds of waste a day, much of it — especially paper products — can be recycled.

Getting this information into the hands of residents on both sides of the state line is a key way to boost recycling rates. Plenty of detailed information on what can be reused and where to take other products — especially glass — can be found at www.recyclespot.org.

Recycling has plenty of supporters in this area. But it needs more, and the MARC program is a worthwhile effort to help convince a lot more people to participate.

This story was originally published April 30, 2015 at 5:22 PM with the headline "New recycling effort will benefit the Kansas City area."