Simple logic suggests we all need to recycle

By David W. Kuhns Sr., Northwest Guardian

America Recycles — you should, too.

Next week Fort Lewis will take part in America Recycles, a day to emphasize the importance of recycling. But this isn’t just some day for tree huggers. Recycling makes good military sense, too.

Several years ago the post announced a 25-year plan for sustainability. The goals were pretty dramatic. One of them is to eliminate all solid waste. That means recycling everything.

But that goal wasn’t the product of some group of pie-in-the-sky idealists. It was the product of cool calculation, just like any other military decision.

The logic is pretty clear.

First, Fort Lewis is important to our nation. This is the pre-eminent power-projection installation in the western half of the nation. We have fantastic facilities to prepare warriors to fight and win our country’s battles. Keeping Fort Lewis as a viable facility to train and deploy combat units is an important mission.

Second, the resources needed to operate Fort Lewis are limited. There is only so much available water, only so much land, only so much fuel. To continue to operate, it is important to balance our consumption against what is available. And we aren’t isolated from the world around us, either. We need to help achieve a balance in the region around us, too.

Recycling helps extend that balance.

Look on it like a family budget.

You bring home a certain amount of money every month; some of it, at least, goes in the bank until you need it. If you can earn interest on that savings, it means you can do more with the money you earn. Recycling is like interest earned on the resources we use. It extends what you can do for the amount of resources you use.

And recycling is easy to do, too.

On a personal level, recycling today doesn’t take any more effort than just throwing things away. You just have to do it.

With single-bin recycling becoming more and more the norm in the region, all you have to choose is which container to throw things in. Why toss it in the trash, when you can toss it in the recycling instead?

We are a consumption-based society, but there is really very little anymore that needs to be wasted. Paper, cardboard, glass, metal, most plastics — all of them can be recycled with almost no extra effort on your part.

Maintaining the kind of life we enjoy uses resources. Maintaining Fort Lewis as an important part of our nation’s defense uses resources, too. Recycling will extend our ability to sustain both our lifestyle and our mission success.

We all need to recycle, as citizens and as Soldiers. It is just simple logic.