Editor:
Re: $500 fine for ‘recycled’ vacuum disputed, March 4.
Congratulations to the City of White Rock for doing something about the continuous dumping of garbage at our recycling facilities.
I use these facilities often, and there are few, if any, times that there is not garbage and styrofoam left at these sites. I also want to thank them for actually having a penalty and fine that gets people’s attention. This is not a “heavy-handed’ punishment, it is a fair punishment that I am sure will deter people from dumping their garbage at these sites.
I think the provincial government should take a page from the City of White Rock and increase the fines for distracted drivers. Based on the number of people I see texting and talking while driving, the current $167 fine is not nearly enough.
As for woman who left her vacuum cleaner at the site, she has the audacity to dump her garbage at these recycling facilities, leaving the taxpayers to pay the disposal costs, and when she gets caught she hides behind an excuse that she was donating her garbage in good faith.
I would suggest the next time she has something to “donate” that she drive up the hill to the Salvation Army, as they are more then happy to accept good used items. I know this for a fact, as my family and I donate on a regular basis.
Randy R. Sigouin, White Rock
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Budgetary red ink, however little or much, is conveniently utilized by our local, provincial and national governments as an excuse to not recycle the vast majority, if not the virtual entirety, of materials circulating throughout society – including broken vacuum cleaners, cappuccino machines, etc.
Instead, they allow the essentially gratuitous dumping of such materials into landfills or pollution production from their burning.
If need be, any red-ink monetary losses should be recouped by placing recycling fees upon all purchasable items, rather than just the current relatively meager few, e.g. bottles.
Perhaps if enough people already inclined to recycle as much as is currently allowed by recycling-box rules begin to place more non-accepted solids into such boxes, the powers that be might feel more compelled to adapt/equip the recycling plants to enable the recycling of such solids, if not others.
We’ve already wasted way too much material and, especially, ecologically limited time.
Frank G. Sterle, Jr., White Rock