One of the great responsibilities of public office is to know when and how to use its power to change a dangerous trend. At this time of recycling disruption and municipal-waste crisis, local governments have an urgent challenge and opportunity to steer America in the right direction. Their decisions about whether to invest in recycling or regress to just burning our trash will impact environmental trends for decades to come.

Over the past 30 years, recycling went from being an aspiration to an American habit and a significant waste-management practice. When I was governor of Indiana in the early 1990s, I worked with the legislature to create and implement local recycling grants to encourage that nascent trend. There was bipartisan interest in recycling at the time, and Indiana’s grant program is still robust today.

Indiana was part of a nationwide phenomenon that benefited from good public-policy decisions. But as much as Americans came to understand and appreciate recycling, most did not know that our wholesome blue-bin habit was overly dependent on the appetite of China’s recycling industry. It was so affordable to ship recyclables overseas that a strong American recycling industry never developed. Our environmentally healthy habit had a dangerously unstable foundation.

(Read more: GOVERNING)