The environmental movement, like so many other political movements suffers from peaks and decline in public interest. Sometimes issues become overriding, common household words, and good policies are developed all the way from the international level and federal government, all the way down to local municipalities and even private organizations like apartment complexes.

The problem is rarely are those policies permanent. Recycling programs in recent years seem to be in decline across our state, or at best stagnating. New ideas have been put on the backburner, or otherwise forgotten. Recycling, and developing sustainable material flows has been forgotten to the much more trendy issue of global climate change.

It's difficult to push back as an activist. Some of the originally designed recycling programs where poorly thought out or had problems in practice. Costs turned out to be higher then expected in some cases. But rather then going backwards, we should be promoting innovation and new ideas. We need better programs, better ideas.

It's true that recycling programs, as they currently exist, won't solve the solid waste problem. It's also true that everyday residential recycling programs only make a very small part of the solution. But it makes no sense to go backwards. We must always be exploring and trying to develop better solutions.