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Remembrances of Recycling Past
By Kathy Parrent
In memory of Thom Roberts, 1955-2023Before the first Earth Day in 1970, there was widespread pollution that most Americans viewed as the cost of progress or even a badge of prosperity. It was a time of waste, overkill and hazards. People went for Sunday drives in large, gas guzzling cars fueled by leaded gas. We marveled at canned vegetables and TV dinners filled with preservatives. Trucks rambled down residential streets spraying pesticides, creating a toxic fog as children played. Plastic was viewed as a miraculous unbreakable substance that could be made into anything. Getting rid of it, however, meant throwing it into landfills where it leached into waterways or sending it to incinerators, releasing neurotoxins (lead, cadmium and mercury); carcinogens and endocrine disruptors (which can lead to cancers, birth defects, immune system suppression and developmental problems in children.) 1 The polluted Cuyahoga River in Cleveland actually caught on fire. The smog in Los Angeles, Mexico City and other cities created a haze that turned the skies dark during the day and gave people respiratory illnesses.
It was time for a wakeup call. With the support of Senator Gaylord Nelson, the first Earth Day was held in 1970, with activists holding teach-ins across the country.
Click to enlargeWhen people learned about the destruction and dangers we faced they were angry and energized and the environmental movement spread. Communities demanded clean air and water and land. We learned the concept of ecology – that all of nature is interwoven and every species has its purpose. We realized we must repair the damage we’d done to the Earth in order to protect ourselves and the Earth’s wilderness and wildlife. There was a perceptible shift from thinking of humans as masters of the universe to viewing ourselves as stewards of our planet.
I was a high school student in suburban Detroit in 1971. My friends were a motley group of about a dozen kids who identified as hippie intellectuals, not realizing how wholesome we really were. Galvanized by the environmental movement and the first Earth Day, we started an environmental club affiliated with the school. The real name was something like “The Royal Oak Dondero Ecology Club”, but in the sardonic spirit of the day we dubbed the group “Students Cleaning Up Messes” and called it SCUM and that’s what stuck.
At that time municipal recycling was a new and novel idea, not in widespread practice. But one friend and classmate, Claudia Myers, the founder of SCUM, approached members of the city council, trying to persuade them to take on can recycling. The city government answered that it wasn’t needed and would be messy and besides, it would be too costly. Claudia suggested our High School environmental group take it on as a pilot project and if we succeeded the city could take it over.
Armed with nothing more than pluck and youthful energy, we took on the project. Every Saturday we’d be stationed in the parking lot of the farmers’ market, ready to receive cleaned cans from the town’s residents. We would remove paper labels and smash them with our feet using two pieces of wood and a hinge. We filled them in 50-gallon drum barrels donated by an eccentric old Royal Oak radical who went by the name of “Pit.” Then we took them in a rented truck driven by a teacher’s wife to a can recycling company 15 miles away on the east side of Detroit. They paid us by the weight of the cans.
Click to enlarge
After about two years, the city government of Royal Oak saw that we had not lost money and the program was popular with Royal Oak residents. (As I recall, we actually profited enough to celebrate with a picnic lunch!) And so the city took over the can recycling operation. Our actions demonstrated Margaret Mead’s adage, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world...”
We even received a presidential award for our efforts, signed by Tricky Dick himself, President Richard Nixon. Maybe he was a crook, but he signed many major pieces of environmental legislation into law, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). So I think back on that award with a mix of pride, disgust and whimsy. I think we all do. But I am still proud of what I did with SCUM and I know I’m not alone.
As veteran SCUM member Thom Roberts, now of Nashville, explained, “Being involved with the recycling project when I was 15 years old informed my life ever since, leading me to broader environmental issues and framing my world view.”
Sources:
https://ecologycenter.org/factsheets/adverse-health-effects-of-plastics/
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/recycling2.htm,
https://www.epa.gov/recycle/recycling-basics
https://www.treehugger.com/six-good-things-richard-nixon-did-for-the-environment-4869322
Interviews with Sally Meitz, Thom Roberts and Claudia Myers.
