Thanks to your efforts to recycle and properly dispose of your refuse, Rockville’s environment improves more and more each year, enabling the city’s beauty to be enjoyed by all who live, work, or play here. With your continued help, we can make greater strides toward improving our environment so that our generation and future generations can enjoy a healthy community, both locally and globally.

Rockville has been on the right track for more than 25 years, and we continue to strive to improve and expand our practices. We should be proud of our efforts thus far. We now accept mixed paper as part of our recycling program, which has increased the total amount of refuse recycled to 35 percent, or 10 pounds per household per week. Our goal is to reach 50 percent, but it is only attainable with your help. We will need to collect almost 20 pounds per household to obtain this goal.

Effective March 1, 2002, our recycling program will become mandatory. However, we are already off to a good start because 75 percent of our citizens participate voluntarily. I commend each of you who have made this effort. We recognize that recycling is not always convenient, but it is necessary to protect our environment. Remember, it is the actions of each of us that make Rockville a better place for all of us.