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I am involved in the tourist industry in Beaufort County renting my house to many who want to experience the beautiful Inner Banks — swimming, fishing, historical sites, shopping and restaurants of the area. I have helped bring tens of thousands of dollars each year to this area and hopefully attracted folks who would like to buy here and live here. It is difficult to explain to my guests that Beaufort County has decided not to recycle. We easily generated as much recycling as trash. As people visit from other places in the State and out they are surprised — and I’m, frankly, embarrassed.

We need to think of long term consequences to our environment. We also need to balance that there is an additional cost of disposing of twice as much trash now as when we were recycling. We could have easily moved to just recycling aluminum, bottles and paper. Perhaps going back to earlier days in our history of a deposit on bottles! But even as we think of this let’s also think of the impact this has on tourist who are appalled in this day and time that there is no option to care about our environment. We do care here in Beaufort County about our environment — our water, our marshes, our wildlife. Let’s put our resources behind recycling!

 

George Bryan

Belhaven