Today’s celebration of Earth Day is regarded by some as a bastion of liberals and their love for Mother Earth. But that’s not the case in Grove City, where an innovative recycling program was launched 25 years ago this month; over a quarter of a century it has kept tons of trash out of Tri-County Landfill and kept hundreds of dollars in the pockets of Grove City residents.

In the spring of 1989, then-borough manager Terence Farren proposed a deal with Tri-County Industries that would bill the borough a flat fee for each ton of garbage taken to the landfill. The borough then calculated residential customers’ monthly bill by dividing the total tonnage by the number of households.

Here’s the innovative part: At the same time it introduced the new billing structure, the borough distributed large, colorful recycling bins to every home, along with complete instructions regarding what could be recycled and how the recyclables had to be prepared and cleaned for pickup. With the recyclable items taken out, according to the plan, the total tonnage of trash would drop, and so would the trash bills.

When each household got a new recycling bin, there was a printed copy of the instructions and the pickup schedule inside. The borough also worked with the newspaper to disseminate the information about recycling and the new trash program. The information certainly would have appeared on the borough’s website, www.grovecityonline.com, except nobody had the Internet in 1989.

The success was immediate and dramatic: the first month’s trash bills dropped by more than one-third of the previous month’s bill. Thousands of pounds of recyclables were culled from the waste stream and were kept out of Tri-County Landfill. And the reduced trash bills gave residents a measurable and practical incentive to exercise responsible environmental stewardship. A yard-waste composting program, introduced a few years later at Hunter Farm Park, enhanced the recycling program even further — and provided the added benefit of garden mulch, ample and free for the taking.

By contrast, some area municipalities with trash contracts are unable to launch such an innovative billing campaign because they don’t have any idea how much trash they accumulate. It’s not part of their contract, and trash haulers are reluctant to disclose tonnage figures if they don’t have to because that information gives them a competitive edge at contract renewal time.

Without access to this basic information, some area municipalities turn trash and recycling collection into a political shell game that generates conflict and confusion. This could be avoided with one change to a municipality’s trash bid specifications: A requirement that the trash hauler shares the tonnage data with the municipality and its residents.

That’s what happened 25 years ago this month in Grove City, thanks to innovative thinking by a borough manager and council. Their approach resulted in an environmentally-friendly program that saved residents a lot of money over the years. And they established a tried-and-true program that should inspire other municipal governments.

It’s a conservative, pocketbook approach to an environmental issue typically championed by liberals. And it’s been working without much fanfare for a quarter-century.