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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 11, 2019)
A4 East Oregonian Friday, January 11, 2019 CHRISTOPHER RUSH Publisher KATHRYN B. BROWN Owner DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor WYATT HAUPT JR. News Editor Founded October 16, 1875 OTHER VIEWS We’re falling behind on recycling A recent report from the state Department of Environmental Quality about Oregon’s goals for recycling included bad news: The state is likely to fall short of its goals for recycling more than half of the waste generated in the state. For calendar year 2017, the state found, Oregonians recovered or recy- cled a little more than 2.3 million tons of waste. That works out to be about 42.8 percent of the roughly 5.4 million tons of waste generated in the state. The problem is that the state’s Leg- islature has set a goal of 52 percent recovery by 2020. (The goal for 2025 is 55 percent.) Officials told the Statesman-Journal newspaper, which reported about the survey, that the 2020 goal now seems out of reach. (A copy of the state report is attached to the online version of this editorial.) Looking at the trends, it certainly appears as if Oregon is moving in the wrong direction: The recovery rate for the state peaked at 49.7 percent in 2012 and has been sliding since then. To be fair, the 2017 rate of 42.8 per- cent was a little better than the 2016 rate, 42.2 percent. And that 42.8 per- cent rate for 2017 represents about 2.3 million tons of recovered material. That’s all stuff that doesn’t need to be dumped at a landfill. And the state report noted some unexpected developments that depressed the state rate. If you’ve been following developments in the world of recycling, you know about one of them: China’s decision near the end of 2017 to ban imports of unsorted paper EO Media Group/Colin Murphy, File A recycling bin full of glass products sits among several for public use at the Astoria Transfer Station on July 24, 2018. and post-consumer plastics. But a bigger factor, the state said, was the unexpected 2015 closure of a paper mill in Newberg that was the state’s largest user of post-consumer wood waste as a fuel. Other mills stopped using wood waste because of federal air-quality rules, a state official told the Statesman-Journal. That suggests one important lesson about recycling: Even the best inten- tions don’t matter much unless there are markets for that recycled material. If you need more evidence about the connection between markets and recy- cling, consider what happened with bottles and cans in 2017: In April of that year, the deposit for those con- tainers doubled, from 5 to 10 cents. Not unexpectedly, 2017 saw a substan- tial increase in the recycling of those containers. Here’s another example: Scrap metal prices increased in 2017, and so did the amount of metals recovered, which jumped by some 14 percent. Another hopeful trend involves manufacturers using lightweight pack- aging instead of heavier materials. The upside, the state said, is that the lighter materials tend to be easier on the environment. The downside is that increasing use of these materials could depress the state’s recovery rate, which is based on weight. The state report contains a wealth of additional information, and some of it is surprising. The report breaks the state into 35 separate “wastesheds,” which Ore- gon law defines as an area that shares a common solid waste disposal system. Even though they don’t exactly corre- spond to county lines, it’s still interest- ing to take a look at the 2017 numbers for the Benton and Linn wastesheds. The first surprise: Both wastesheds for Linn and Benton were below the state average. Another surprise: The Linn wasteshed had a higher recovery rate (37.4 percent) than did the Ben- ton wasteshed (34.5 percent). Both wastesheds were below the 2025 goals set by the state Legislature (45 percent for Linn and 44 percent for Benton). To be fair, only six wastesheds cur- rently are running ahead of that 2025 goal. The best mark in the state, 52.8 percent, came in Lane County, but that county still trails its 2025 goal of 63 percent. Hitting the state’s ambitious goals will require the development of robust (and stable) markets for recycled mate- rial. But here’s one more number to think about: Maybe we all could do something to reduce that 5 million tons of stuff we throw away every year. OTHER VIEWS What real border security looks like O N THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BOR- to erect concrete walls along most of its bor- DER — Other than the Korean Pen- der with the Gaza Strip, despite Hamas’ insula’s DMZ, there’s probably multiple attempts last year to use mass pro- tests to breach the fence. Israel’s border with no border in the world as fraught with the Egypt is marked by a tall and sturdy “smart potential for sudden violence as this one, fence” packed with electronic sensors, but known locally as the Blue Line. Since Pres- ident Donald Trump thinks border secu- not a wall. And Israel’s longest border, with rity is the issue of our time, it’s Jordan, stretching some about 250 worth considering how Israel — miles, has fencing that for the most with tight borders, real threats, and part is primitive and minimal. a no-nonsense attitude toward its So how does Israel maintain security needs — does it. border security? Two ways: close What I saw Wednesday while cooperation with neighbors where traveling along the Blue Line was it’s possible and the use of mod- ern technology and effective deter- ... a fence. A fence studded with rence where it’s not. sensors, to be sure, but by no means B rett Egyptian President Abdel-Fat- an imposing one. This is what a S tephenS tah el-Sissi recently attested to the long stretch of the border between COMMENT depth of cooperation in an inter- two sworn enemies looks like. view last week with “60 Minutes” Does that look like Trump’s idea of a “big beautiful wall”? Does it even look — so deep, in fact, that the Egyptian gov- ernment made an attempt to stop the inter- like the “steel slats” the president now offers as his idea of an aesthetic concession to Dem- view from airing. Jordan’s border patrol typ- ically does its work facing east, not west, ocrats? Not quite. Yet for the last 19 years it to prevent possible penetrations into Israel. was all the fencing Israelis thought was nec- essary to secure its side of the Blue Line. Security cooperation with the Palestinian That started to change in December, Authority also runs deep despite political after Israel announced that it was conduct- differences, since Mahmoud Abbas shares ing an operation to destroy tunnels dug Israel’s interest in suppressing Hamas. by Hezbollah under the border. The tun- As for technology, I saw it at work on a nel construction — secretly detected by tour earlier Wednesday of an Israeli military Israel some four years ago — was intended base on the Golan Heights. In a crowded, to infiltrate hundreds of Hezbollah fighters windowless room within a bunker-like into Israel in the event of war. As an addi- structure, 20 or so women soldiers, some of tional precaution, Jerusalem is spending them still teenagers, sat at screens patiently an estimated $600 million to replace about watching every inch of Israel’s border with 20 kilometers of the fence with a concrete Syria, noticing patterns, prioritizing poten- tial threats, and relaying information to wall, mainly to provide greater peace of operators in the field. mind to the 162,000 Israelis who live near Why an all-female unit? Because the the Lebanese border. Such a wall may look formidable. But Israeli military has determined that women it won’t stop tunnel construction or missile have longer attention spans than men. Last firing, the two principal threats Hezbollah August, the unit spotted seven Islamic State poses to Israel. Nor has Israel felt the need fighters, wearing suicide belts and carry- Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. ing grenades, as they were infiltrating a no man’s land on their way to Israel. An air- strike was called in. The men never reached the border. None of this is to say that physical bar- riers are invariably pointless or evil. Isra- el’s fence along the Egyptian border all but ended the flow of illegal African migrants, though most illegal immigrants in Israel arrive legally by plane and simply over- stay their visas. The much-maligned wall (most of which is also a fence) that divides Palestinians from Israelis in Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank played a major role in ending the terrorism of the Second Intifada. Yet the Israeli experience also suggests that the best way to protect a border is to rely on the tools of the 21st century, not the 12th. Walls only occasionally provide the most reliable security. They can be danger- ous for providing the illusion of security. And there are vastly more effective means than concrete to defend even the most dan- gerous borders. Why can’t Democrats and Republicans simply agree to build additional smart fencing in places where it’s miss- ing and call it, for political effect, an “Israe- li-style barrier”? The good news for the U.S. is that we don’t face Hezbollah, Hamas or ISIS across our border, only people who overwhelm- ingly want to relieve their own plight and contribute their labor for everyone’s better- ment. If we really wanted to secure the bor- der, our first priority should be to make it easier for them to arrive through the front door rather than sneak in through the back. Brett Stephens is a columnist for the New York Times. The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 9780, or email editor@eastoregonian.com.