Normally, when I am faced with the challenges of talking recycling to our community at NAS Whidbey Island, it is because I am trying to promote a specific program or prevent unauthorized behavior from happening.

Today, the topic is bordering on both the horrific and the ridiculous: illegal dumping.

Did you think that when signing up to work for the Federal Government—active duty, civilian or contractor—that it is okay to intentionally damage government property?

That it is okay to throw it in the trash because you don’t feel like doing the paperwork to push it through the system properly?

That it is okay, in the immediacy of an important inspection, event or VIP visit, to toss it outside in the weather and render it unusable?

If your answer is yes to any of these, think again. There are base, county, state and federal regulations that all impact this with pretty much the same answer; a resounding, “No!”

We have one of the best recycling programs in the entire Navy with a crew that is striving daily to provide NAS Whidbey Island with the best possible service and illegal dumping and disposal just makes our job harder. 

Illegal dumping causes havoc with routines and our ability to get our job done. Route drivers have to stop and pick up items that should have gone through DRMO. Other recycle crew members are called away from regular routines to clean up messes that should never have happened. Wet furniture and cardboard becomes trash instead of reusable or re-salable material.

Money, funding and budget is not easy to come by. Why would any command, worth its salt, choose to pay extra dollars for trash disposal when recycling costs your command nothing? Think about it.

Hangar 5 compactor was recently rendered unusable because someone saw fit to shove a desk into it. Recent checks of dumpsters and compactors have turned up nearly 400 pounds of PII, wooden crates, more furniture, plastics, metals and even Air Crew Explosive Cartridges.

Someone else was careless enough to leave an activated flight line badge in a bag with un-mailed official mail in it on the ground by a dumpster. Think about what that could mean in the wrong hands.

Last week, three active duty military members were discovered by my staff trying to shove a metal filing cabinet into the compactor outside their facility. In that same compactor there were a couple of chairs, two microwaves, a television, metal screen frames and boxes of packing paper.

We are currently conducting a waste characterization study of a high profile location aboard the station. The result of this is the discovery that, as expected, about 75 percent of their trash is recyclable in the form of paper, metals and plastic.

When you factor in office food waste (compost) that number jumps to above 90 percent. We should see almost no trash coming from this site and we are confident that it is representative of many other offices on our base.

My job is to answer questions about recyclables. Where can I dispose of this? What can I do with that? Call us at 257-5481 and we will help figure out what to do in your situations.