Ever peek inside the sidewalk trash cans in downtown Manchester, NH? I do.

And what I spy, almost without fail, is an array of plastic soda bottles, aluminum beer cans, plastic Dunkin' Donuts cups and glass bottles.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, downtown is the only section of Manchester to have no recycling opportunities whatsoever, not even sidewalk recycling bins like this one I saw in downtown Milwaukee, Wis., last month:

While downtown receives daily trash pick-up, it is the only area of the city that does not have weekly recycling pickup. When I lived downtown this meant if my wife and I wanted to recycle (we did) that I had to personally cart our recyclables to the sorting facility on Dunbarton Road - a waste of time and gas that further contributed to traffic congestion and pollution in the city.

Living now in the city's Oak Park neighborhood, we have curbside recycling pickup every Monday. But downtown's continued lack of recycling still bothers me. I work downtown and if my office wants to recycle (it does) we must make a Dunbarton Road recycling run every few weeks. This seems to me to be grossly inefficient, not just for us, but for all downtown businesses. And in the end, it's a waste of taxpayers' money as all of those beer and soda bottles sold in downtown bars and restaurants, and all of that paper and cardboard coming out of downtown office, go straight into a landfill - a privlige for which the City must pay tipping fees. Recycling, on the other hand, has the potential to actually make the City money.

Downtown is the heart of Manchester, NH. It is where the vast majority of those who work in and visit the city spend their time and money. As such, downtown should be leading the city's recycling efforts, not lagging behind.