We Could Use Some Stimulus Applied to Our Environmental Infrastructure

Amid all the talk about President Obama’s stimulus plan to help renew our flagging economy, I wish there was more discussion about our insufficient environmental infrastructure.

America’s energy sector and especially its utility industries have already received a significant boost from the stimulus spending, with more to come. That’s not too surprising, since it’s consistent with the president’s stated goal of helping the country achieve greater sustainability and energy efficiency.

At the same time, however, the reality is that this country currently lacks the infrastructure to really be sustainable in the area of handling e-waste in environmentally responsible ways.

In a former life, I supervised the sanitation efforts for a municipality. Among the things we did faithfully was to send yard waste for composting. But recycling glass and paper was a more expensive proposition for us, simply because the facilities for those operations were further away, thus rendering it a more costly exercise. That problem remains today for many municipalities, companies and other institutions that would like to be more environmentally responsible. Their hearts are in the right place, but the costs also have to be in alignment as well.

If only our lawmakers could see the tremendous opportunity lying before them. If some of this stimulus spending could be devoted to building a more robust national recycling infrastructure, it would do double duty. We’d be setting the stage for employing hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a few million, workers who have been displaced from ailing industrial sectors such as manufacturing, even as we significantly improved the environment.

Dare we hope that our elected leaders might eventually recognize the wisdom of such a path?