Give us the opportunity.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a HOW. (Hater of Wichita). I feel like the HOWs deserve they're own acronym because their sentiment is rampant, and you can see their ramblings every day in the Opinion Line. I won't bore you with a sampling here, but typically the calls consist of people complaining about what a hick town this place is.

Sure, I've complained about Wichita before, and I'm sure I'll continue to, but you know what? It's a nice place to live. Adam and I are young, we own our own home (and didn't have to spend a half-million dollars to do it), and my work is 12 miles from my house, and it takes me exactly 15 traffic-free minutes to get there.

There's a community of young, hip, socially conscious people in town. Okay, so we're definitely not the majority - but we are out here in the nooks and crannies.

Right now, what's frustrating to me about Wichita is that no matter how many times it comes up in a council meeting or someone writes a letter to the editor of the Eagle, we cannot get a city-wide recycling program up and running. So many people in this town just don't care. How do we get the movement going? I know the recyclers are out there.

Every other Saturday, I take all my stuff to Pro-Kan recycling. And I mean, ALL my stuff. They take everything - paper, glass, plastic, cans, magazines, junk mail, plastic supermarket bags, cardboard, cereal boxes, tin cans, everything. Adam and I never have a full trash cart anymore. And every day that I go to the recycling drop-off, every available drive-up space is filled.

It's not just do-rag wearing twenty-somethings like me - there's TONS of senior citizens, lots of people my age, and everywhere in between. No matter what time of day I go it's like this. Obviously there are people in Wichita who do want to do their part to keep the planet chugging along at least a little longer.

How can we get this town to be a little bit more like our neighbors to the North? No, not Canada - Newton.

In Newton, recycling is mandatory. In fact, you only are allowed a certain amount of trash that isn't recyclable. They seem to be doing okay up there. I'm sure there were naysayers in the beginning, but we need to stop thinking about the people complaining, and start thinking about the benefits.

Less trash in the landfills, less fighting about where to put the new Sedgwick County landfill, right?

Go Green!