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Before You Trash It, Better Ask Her First

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By CHERYL BENTLEY, The Suncoast News

Published: November 5, 2007

Monica Dear remembers collecting soda bottles with her brother - a Sunday ritual - while growing up in Hudson, then trading their finds for cash.

She laments that children no longer have that opportunity to pick up some spending money.

"The bottle deposit law got repealed. I'd like to know why," Dear says.

And she'll probably find out, having already enlisted the help of state Rep. John Legg.

When it comes to recycling, she's persistent "to the point where I'm a thorn," Dear says. "But I'm a nice thorn. I never get nasty."

Dear has been trying to prick Pasco's collective conscience since co-founding Recycling and Education to Save Our Resources for a Clean Environment in 2002. RESORCE had 15 members then. Today it has more than 100.

In 2003, the recycling club circulated surveys to measure opinions on recycling and got more than 1,200 responses. Of those, more than 90 percent wanted more dropoff locations. And most weren't satisfied with having plastic, cans and glass picked up biweekly in blue bags residents have to buy at stores, Dear said.

The county doesn't have pickups for newspapers.

The survey's positive response about recycling was helpful in getting a pilot program at Meadow Pointe last year, according to Pasco Recycling coordinator Rachel Surrency. Some residents recycled in blue bags and some in bins. Almost twice as many with bins recycled as did those with bags.

The results encouraged recycling proponents such as Dear, who argue mandatory recycling would free up space at the waste processing center in Shady Hills.

Although she thinks more people would recycle if they had bins, Dear also would support mandatory recycling with plastic bags.

Opponents say buying bins could cost the county $1 million.

Surrency also mentions Dear's commitment to promoting blue bags at her workplace, The Home Depot in Port Richey. She makes sure the bags are always in stock and includes them in appropriate merchandising displays.

Surrency calls Dear's commitment to recycling "passionate."

That's one of the words County Commissioner Ann Hildebrand also uses in describing Dear, adding that "she's got a wealth of information."

"She recycles everything from coffee grounds to eggshells," said Hildebrand.

The two women serve together on the board of Keep Pasco Beautiful, a public-private coalition that promotes keeping the county environmentally friendly.

The Bug Bit Early

Dear remembers, as a child, scooping up water running from a gutter and returning it to a canal at low tide near her Clark Street home in Hudson.

"I thought the canal needed water," she recalls.

Her family moved to Florida when her father, John, now 90, retired as an Air Force pilot in 1968; Dear was 7.

She's a product of Pasco County schools: Hudson Elementary, where her mother, Gisela, was a teacher's aide for 17 years; Bayonet Point Junior High and Hudson High.

She majored in biology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, intending to become a veterinarian. But shortly after Dear graduated, her mother died of cancer. And a grieving Dear found she no longer wanted to seek more schooling.

She worked at Pasco County Mosquito Control and later as assistant manager at Tampa Executive Airport in Odessa. In both places, she started a can recycling program.

Fondness For Problem-Solving

But it was buying a home in New Port Richey in 1994 that incited, out of necessity, her desire to recycle.

The home's former owner had left lots of trash for Dear to deal with, including 10 coffee cans of oil, piles of cardboard and "newspapers out the ying-yang."

Buoyed by her fondness for problem-solving, she wanted to find something useful to do with the trash.

She ended up in the county recycling office, which she discovered had limited funding to inform residents about ways to recycle.

She consulted Hildebrand, who was "very responsive" when Dear floated an idea to get more people involved in recycling.

Dear's self-deprecating sense of humor takes over when she remembers the early days of her recycling mission: "I became a little bit of a pest."

Her enthusiasm jumped up a notch when she started working for The Home Depot in 1997. (She's a telephone operator there now.) Finding that fellow employees needed a bite from the bug, she stood up at every staff meeting to remind them about the process and the importance of recycling.

"Little by little, we chipped away at it," Dear says. "Here it is 10 years later and things are going great."

Since she and co-worker Sandra Myers started RESORCE, the club has become a fixture at Greater New Port Richey Main Street events. Dear credits Main Street's director, Judy DeBella Thomas, with being supportive.

Now, Dear's energies are about to be tested: She and husband Guiseppe "Joe" LoSapio, a medical equipment sales representative, are adopting a little boy. But she has no doubt she'll have enough passion for both motherhood and recycling.

"I'm like a hummingbird," she says. "I never sit still."

FIND OUT MORE

County commissioners are having a public workshop on recycling at 1:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at the West Pasco Government Center off Little Road in New Port Richey.

For information on the RESORCE recycling club, call Monica Dear at (727) 857-0039 or visit www.resorce.net.

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