It’s hard not to chuckle just a bit over the recent misfortune of Anthony Mastrangelo.

He’s the 81-year-old mayor of New Castle, next door in Lawrence County, which shares an ambitious recycling program with Mercer County, our mutual neighbor to the north.

Mayor Mastrangelo was issued a criminal citation recently by the Lawrence County sheriff for violating the county’s recycling and waste management programs.

The mayor found out about it when his name appeared last week in a list of violators in the New Castle News, according to court documents.

“My sister called and said ‘Did you see the paper? Look on page 3.’ I read it and nearly fell off my chair,” Mastrangelo said later in an interview.

The mayor said he had good intentions. Three months ago, he discarded a pet carrier, believing that since it was made of plastic, then it should be recyclable. He put it in the big blue recycling bin near the county jail, one of several designated collection points. A video surveillance camera captured the mayor’s violation.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Mastrangelo said. “It was plastic. The sign says they accept papers, cardboard, plastic and glass.”

But the signs clearly indicate only plastic bottles are accepted — no toys, tools, tableware or other plastic items, including pet carriers.

Mayor Mastrangelo admits he saw the sign. He should have noticed this restriction, which is repeated on the department’s website and its Facebook page. But somehow he missed it. Now Mastrangelo faces the prospect of four months of community service if found guilty.

And we in Butler County have no right to rub it in.

The Lawrence-Mercer recycling program is well coordinated, publicized and enforced. By comparison, Butler County has a program, but it’s not nearly as visible or as active as our neighbor’s initiative.

Our county’s recycling website (http://www.co.butler.pa.us/recycling) offers one proud fact: ours wasthe first in Pennsylvania toestablish residential curbside recycling countywide, way back in 1992. But the rest of the information posted at the website is generic — no specifics about locations, acceptable recyclable items, incentives or penalties.

This may be because of the decision early on to let every municipality in Butler County set its own recycling guidelines. It’s hard to enforce any solid waste restrictions when the rules change across the borders of 57 different municipalities.

No that the county or any member municipality has done an exemplary job with recycling. Evidence is seen in the piles of trash pulled out of the Connoquenessing Creek each year by volunteers with the Allegheny Aquatic Alliance. In its five short years of existence, the alliance has pulled about 100 tons of junk out of the creek, including about 2,000 old tires and a growing number of castoff TVs, refrigerators, computers and other appliances.

It’s easy to scoff at the mayor of a nearby city for his recycling faux pas. But at the same time, give credit to the folks in Lawrence and Mercer counties for their forward thinking about recycling, waste management, and keeping the waterways free of junk.