The Dark Side of Modern Volunteerism; S. Barniskis

But in recent years voluntarism has devel oped a dark side, which has also come to be taken for granted. Too often, volunteer effort is used by well-meaning people to demonstrate a false feasibility for their favorite charitable or civic undertaking, for the purpose of inducing government to take over the project. The eco nomics demonstrated using privately donated funds and volunteer labor are then replaced by the economics of coercive taxation, and some times even conscripted citizen labor. A municipality near where I live provides a useful example, if only because it's an example being repeated in hundreds of places across the country. Several years ago, a highly motivated young woman and a committee of her environ mentally aware friends convinced their town ship officials to set up a voluntary recycling center on township property. The township received the proceeds from sale of the recyclable materials, and benefited somewhat from the reduction of landfill space used. Meanwhile, the committee built a constit uency of other voluntary recyclers, who would meet on Saturday mornings when residents Andrew E. Barniskis is an aerospace engineer and consult ant in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

dropped off their cans, bottles, and newspapers. In two years, the township took in about $3,000 and saved perhaps a dozen truckloads' worth of landfill space. But this was accom plished thanks to countless hours of volunteer labor by workers at the recycling center, and by residents who took the time to sort, wash, and bundle their recyclable trash and transport it to the center on Saturday mornings at their own expense. Eventually, one member of the volunteer re cycling committee parlayed his new visibility in the community into election as a township su pervisor. Soon, the energetic founder of the voluntary program was appointed by the town ship to the newly created position of Recycling Coordinator. As a result of the "success" of the voluntary recycling program, it soon came about that one neighborhood in the township was chosen for a voluntary pilot program for curbside pickup of recyclables, and a year later-perhaps inevita bly-the township supervisors, at the urging of the now quasi-official volunteer recycling com mittee, voted in an ordinance making curbside recycling mandatory for every resident in the township.

How different the new mandatory program is from the cheerful Saturday morning volunteer efforts! Anyone placing recyclable materials in their ordinary trash is now subject to a $300 fine. "Scavengers," who used to drive around the streets in the early morning hours, using their own time and effort to gather recyclables from trash, are subject to a fine of $300 for every property they visit. Recyclables now be long to the township, by law. A frightening change of spirit surrounds the 22 THE FREEMAN. JANUARY 1989 new program. Thus far, it appears the township will collect far less for recyclables than it is paying a contractor for the service of picking them up, and the volume collected has been a negligible fraction of the amount of landfill space still being used. Nevertheless, the town ship is proclaiming the program a "success," while 'at the same time searching for scapegoats to blame for why it's not more successful. Res idents are asked to tum in the license numbers of suspicious vehicles that might be "scav enging," and, in another perversion of volun tarism, there is talk of establishing "block captains" and using Neighborhood Watch groups to enforce the recycling law. People crit icizing the program at public meetings have been subjected to vicious verbal abuse, includ ing suggestions that they leave the country if they don't want to be part of a "civilized society."