Will Fairbanks Recycling Program Get a Boost From PETA?

Ads Promoting Kindness to Wildlife Can Help Offset New Center’s Cost

For Immediate Release:
May 2, 2017

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

As the Fairbanks North Star Borough moves forward with plans for a new recycling center, PETA sent a letter to Mayor Karl W. Kassel this morning offering to help reduce the cost of the program by paying to place an ad on recycling bins, trucks, and centers. The ad, available here, shows a raccoon whose head is stuck in a tin can and proclaims, “Don’t Let This Happen Again. Please Crush ALL Cans for the Safety of Our Animal Friends.”

“Aluminum cans, plastic cups, and open jars can become death traps for hungry or inquisitive animals if they aren’t disposed of properly,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “We’re asking Fairbanks not to waste this opportunity for ads on its recycling bins that would reduce both the risk to wildlife and the cost to the city.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—encourages everyone to keep all garbage in tightly sealed chew-proof containers, rinse out aluminum cans and put the tops inside so that they can’t cut an animal’s tongue, crush cans and cups, and cut open empty cardboard and plastic containers so that small animals can’t get their faces or heads trapped inside them.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s letter to Mayor Kassel follows.

May 2, 2017

The Honorable Karl W. Kassel

Mayor of Fairbanks North Star Borough

Dear Mayor Kassel,

On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide, including many across Alaska, I am writing in response to news reports that Fairbanks North Star Borough voted to appropriate $150,000 for a new recycling center that will open this summer. We have a proposition that could help Fairbanks reduce expenditures and reuse your equipment to protect animals as well as the environment. To promote responsible recycling, we’d like to explore paying to place our “Don’t Let This Happen Again” signs on your recycling bins and trucks and at your centers in order to remind residents to crush cans before disposing of them.

We all recognize that recycling reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills and combustion facilities, conserves natural resources, and helps reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change. But aluminum cans, plastic cups, and open jars that are not disposed of properly can become traps for hungry or inquisitive animals. Simply placing these potentially lifesaving signs on your recycling trucks and bins and at your centers would encourage both environmental stewardship and compassion for animals.

I would be pleased to send over a supply of our signs immediately in order to remind residents to dispose of recyclable items responsibly. We hope you don’t waste this opportunity to protect animals and that you will consider placing our signs on the city’s trucks, bins, and centers. Thank you for your consideration.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk

President