Recycling redux.

E maintains its 100 percent record in presenting and thoroughly researching interesting topics with the May/June 2006 cover story "How to Recycle Practically Anything." We pay for more than 9,000 curbside recycling programs through our tax dollars, but unfortunately are getting mixed messages on what is recyclable where.

Municipalities must do a better job educating residents about their specific recycling guidelines. Recycling rates have dropped from 65 percent in 1992 to 45 percent in 2004 for aluminum cans, despite a 95 percent energy savings in making new cans from old. This material is needed now more than ever.

Currently, I feel ignorance prevents us from improving recycling rates that would help the country economically, protect our limited resources, and minimize our intrusion into the natural world's plant and animal habitat. Municipalities need to educate the public, organize volunteers (many senior Americans would love this), and build community spirit to eliminate waste and get the most out of extracted resources.

This is the type of patriotism this country so desperately needs, despite the current administration's attempts (for example, Dick Cheney saying, "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy") to convince us otherwise.

Jay Lustgarten

North Bellmore, NY

You guys let me down! I turned immediately to your May/June 2006 cover article "How to Recycle Practically Anything." I was looking for information about glass recycling, but you said next to nothing about the subject. We use a lot of glass beverage and food bottles in our household every week.

As a professor who teaches environmental science, I have gotten into some spirited discussions about glass. I read years ago that glass is not worth recycling, making it a conservation myth. That makes sense to me. Glass is essentially melted sand and not in short supply. In fact, it would take a lot of energy to re-melt and recast glass.

On the other hand, we don't want it in landfills since it won't biodegrade and can't be compacted. Yet in order to be recycled, it must be sorted by color and the caps removed in advance. In addition, it is heavy, and is dangerous to handle and transport.

I have a friend who "recycles" his glass bottles by taking them out in the ocean and using them for target practice. Maybe his plan makes as much sense as anything else.

The best plan of all is to re-discover deposit bottles, following the initiative of some progressive municipal and state governments. When I was a kid, my buddies and I would range far and wide, gathering up discarded bottles, throwing them into our bike baskets and returning them to the market to redeem the deposits. It sounds to me that glass recycling is a subject unto itself.

Hugh C. Allen

Miami Shores, FL

We'd like to add bicycles to your directory of "How to Recycle Practically Anything." There are a lot of bicycles collecting dust in garages and basements. Instead of sending them to the landfill, we encourage people to donate surplus bikes, parts and accessories to one of the many organizations that returns bicycles to working order, and gives them to underprivileged youth, community bike programs and international aid organizations. To find a local organization, see www.ibike.org/environment/recycling.

David Mozer

International Bicycle Fund

Via e-mail