By Steve Davies, Healthy Planet Columnist
So, I spent most of my last Father’s Day, thinking about what to write for this column but, this time I think it was a pretty easy topic. Turns out this year, the anniversary of my dad’s passing fell on Father’s Day and as I’ve mentioned a few times, he’s one of the reasons I think I’m so passionate about recycling and the environment.
Be it in the days of my youth, when I would go visit our local recycling center with him to later on, starting my own recycling business after I graduated from college to when I was the student organizer for the state of Missouri and Earth Day in 1990 followed by working for the Missouri Public Interest Research Group or MoPIRG in 1991.
As I’ve talked about before, I always enjoyed those recycling adventures, checking out the green, blue, brown and clear glass bins. I know you weren’t supposed to smash them but, it always looked like so much fun. If I’m being honest though, I don’t know that I actually did it. I guess I was one of those kids who never wanted to break the rules.
Now fast forward from the seventies to the eighties and that’s when I started my own recycling business. I started off first with recycling for local businesses like Brandt’s Cafe in University City and Great Harvest Restaurant in Kirkwood. Then I went door to door handing out flyers to recycle in the city of Sunset Hills with my own business card created for my company, Sun Recycling. While unfortunately that never took off, I really enjoyed recycling for those small businesses, borrowing my parents Subaru station wagon to do all the picking up.
From there however, I took an even bigger step into the nineties, first when I became the student organizer for Missouri and Earth Day in 1990 and then working for MoPIRG the following year as a student organizer, working on a variety on issues like the environment at Meramec Community College, where my dad taught for twenty-five years.
This of course, led me here, writing about recycling for The Healthy Planet. Though my dad is no longer here as he passed away back in 1994, I know he’s one of the reasons why I continue to focus on the environment and recycling and as I also mentioned at one time, my oldest son and I picking up trash from time to time when we’re out, recycling what we can.
For comments or questions about recycling please email me at thpreycler@yahoo.com