By KayLynn Allen
Hello Residents and Visitors of Lake Lure,
Southern Living Magazine just released in March of 2022 that Lake Lure was the #1 pick for the Best lake town in the South. We that live here know the beauty and charm of the area, and the many blessing of living near the lake.
Recently I started up a conversation on our local facebook page about the recycle waste challenges we all seem to share here at Lake Lure. Scott & I live within Rumbling Bald and have been taking our recycling to the Bills Creek Convenience Center for the past several years. We would much prefer to take it to the dumpsters at Rumbling Bald, but sadly they don’t have a recycling system any longer. This I have learned is because the community and guests were abusing it by putting regular trash in the recycling bin and contaminating it. This created excessive charge back fines from Republic Garbage Service and they were subsequently removed. Sadly, instead of educating the guests upon check-in and having owner’s cooperation in an effort to recycle appropriately, the recycling dumpsters were removed due to financial burdens.
Resignation seems to be the trend these days. It sometimes appears that very few really care about our environment or our personal footprint we leave behind. It is astonishing when you look at the “single-use” plastic bags distributed from our grocery stores. A single-use plastic bag that we use for mere minutes to transfer our groceries will eventually break down into microplastics and ultimately enter our own food chain. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Americans use an average of 365 plastic bags per person per year. Most plastic bags are difficult and costly to recycle and are therefore not allowed in our regular recycling bins. It will take 1,000 years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. Unfortunately, the bags don’t break down completely but instead photo-degrade, becoming microplastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute our environment.
One of my favorite actors, Jeff Bridges speaks the truth to plastic in a very short film titled: Open Your Eyes. This is a four minute film that I urge everyone to watch. Its available online thru the Plastic Pollution Coalition. He narrates this film sharing that plastic is a substance that the Earth cannot digest. Sadly, worldwide reliance on disposable plastic packaging, plastic straws, plastic utensils, and single-use plastic bags are killing wildlife, overwhelming our planet, and are poisoning our own bodies when entering the food chain.
It’s time to not only implement recycling, but to start saying “No” to single-use plastic. This is a challenge for all of us, but sustainability must be implemented. It begins with education and sharing a more responsible alternative to simply tossing unwanted garbage into the trash that can be repurposed.
After doing a little bit of research, I found that we do have some positive options here at Lake Lure to help improve as stewards to our own beautiful community.
I recently learned that the Town of Lake Lure will provide blue recycle bins and pick them up once a week on Wednesdays for a nominal fee of $8.50 a month, plus a one-time cost of bins. You can learn more at http://www.townoflakelure.com or call (828) 625-9983, x129. This service is offered around the lake including behind the gates at Rumbling Bald. If we as residents and businesses provided our visitors with recycling options it would provide a seamless solution, rather than simply doing nothing. We can also ask our local time-share properties, Airbnb homeowners, housekeepers, and restaurants to implement recycling programs if they currently don’t have a system.
The Bills Creek Convenience Center, at 2130 Bills Creek Road offers trash and recycling options. This is the closest recycling center to Lake Lure. They are opened daily Monday thru Saturday from 6AM to 7 PM and Saturday from 8AM to 7PM.
The best option in sustainability is making changes in our personal usage and consumption of single-use plastic. Please say “No” to single-use plastic bags and invest in some reusable grocery bags or totes. Make a difference by using a reusable drinking water tumbler. We all know that plastic water bottles serve their purpose and are needed, but let’s be sure to recycle them appropriately and whenever possible use a more sustainable long-term solution.
If you do have extra single-use plastic bags which are typically thrown in the regular trash, you can recycle them at your local Ingles grocery store. Ingles provides a recycle bin for plastic bags and it is located at the exit near the pharmacy.
Be the change! Educate your children about sustainability. Together we can implement better awareness. For those of you that recycle, Thank You! We are blessed to have beautiful Lake Lure and Hickory Nut Gorge to reside and play in. Let’s work together to be good stewards.
Wishing you a beautiful day ahead!
