Come out of the cave!
Our gun laws are far too liberal [“Virginia is for gun lovers,” Government News, April 20]. The U.S. is now aligned with the backward countries rather than those in the forefront of civilized development. For me it’s stretching things a bit to allow only hunting guns, exclusively for hunting because I don’t understand the pleasure anyone gets from killing animals, but that’s as far as I can go. Supporters of liberal gun laws are living in the stone age as far as I am concerned.
Dabney Waring
Charlottesville
Trash talk
It seems to me that there is a great need for someone to actually do a report on the Zion Crossroads recycling facility [“Separation Anxiety,” What’s Up with That, C-VILLE by Ace Atkins, May 4]. I heard at a recent neighborhood association meeting that as of July (June?) 4, the city’s contract with the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority will expire and that the Authority will not be renewing the contract. When the City Counselors (or perhaps it was the planners?) were asked by an individual who was also at this meeting what was to be done, and the City replied that it honestly didn’t know.
So, now it seems as if all of us in Charlottesville we have no choice but to go with the Van der Linde facility in Zion Crossroads, a facility about which no one seems to know anything beyond what Van der Linde publishes. A local environmental nonprofit, GreenBlue (which actually does not really focus on local or advocacy issues) recently had a group of individuals go there to take a tour of the facility, but unfortunately the equipment was shut down that day. I personally am skeptical of the “one bin” method (i.e. we throw all our crap in one bin and let the Van der Linde facility separate recyclables from trash) for at least two reasons: First, I trust myself to do a better job separating than I do someone for whom doing so is “just a job.” That is, I actually take the time to cut off and remove the metal rings from the cardboard concentrate orange juice containers, because I’ve heard that recycling facilities often throw out (as trash) such “mixed products.” Second, I’m not sure I want some stranger getting paid to sift through my garbage, where bills, credit card receipts, private correspondences, etc. end up!
Brenton Sullivan
Charlottesville