Municipal Recycling

Kansas City Councilman James Rowland has proposed a new program that may help the city’s 500,000 residents reach greater recycling levels and reduce the amount of solid waste by 25 percent.

Rowland hopes the city will adopt the RecycleFIRST program as part of its overall budget, which is scheduled for completion at the end of March.

If adopted, RecycleFIRST would be a victory for curbside recycling proponents after city residents voted down three other recycling-related proposals over the past decade.

Rowland says the program would not involve an extra charge to homeowners. Instead, households would receive 120 stickers over a 12-month period. Households could purchase a recycling bin with 10 stickers or $10.

The program would accept various recyclables, with the exception of glass, and bins would be collected every other week.

Each bag of trash or leaves and brush would require one sticker. For every truckload of yard waste taken to a drop-off center, 10 stickers would be required. Finally, each bulky item pickup would cost 20 stickers.

Stickers would be mailed with city water bills, and additional stickers could be purchased for $1 each.

The program includes "amnesty weeks" during the year, where residents could put out 10 bags of trash without stickers. Neighborhood "clean sweep" events would enable residents to put out bulky items and additional trash without stickers.

According to local press reports, Rowland said he thought the program could work within the existing budget because the cost of recycling has fallen in the last 10 years, after factoring for inflation, while hauling costs have risen.

New York City is in the process of finalizing a contract with Hugo Neu Schnitzer East that will bring plastic recycling back to the city after the Bloomberg administration suspended it in July 2002 because of budgetary reasons.

According to the New York Times, Hugo Neu has offered to pay the city $5.15 per ton for plastic and metal. Other larger garbage firms wanted to charge more than $67 a ton to remove these materials.

When they suspended plastics and glass recycling, city officials claimed they were spending tens of millions of dollars a year for a program that still put a great deal of refuse into landfills. However, Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. released a report in December suggesting that since suspending recycling, the Sanitation Department had reduced its garbage collection runs by less than 2 percent, the New York Times reports.

The new contract will provide the city with a little more than half a million dollars in additional revenue, according to the paper. However, the real savings would be that the city would no longer have to pay for the removal of its recyclables.

Hugo Neu Schnitzer is one of the largest scrap recycling firms in the U.S. and has considerable experience exporting recyclable commodities. 

Quarry Tile Company, Spokane, has joined the King County LinkUp program. Quarry Tile manufactures Eco-Tile, a ceramic tile made of roughly 70 percent recycled materials.

Eco-Tile is made using a combination of recycled glass, recycled grinding paste from the computer industry and recycled soil and rock waste from the sand and gravel industry. Eco-Tile uses mixed-color cullet, which King County Solid Waste Division has designated as a priority material for increased recycling.

Quarry Tile uses glass dust supplied by TriVitro Corporation, Kent, Wash., another LinkUp program member, in its manufacturing process.

The material from TriVitro comprises 25 percent of Eco-Tile’s recycled content, saving TriVitro $20,000 a year in disposal costs.

Eco-Tile is available in more than 50 colors, referred to as "Natural Hues," five sizes and all the trim shapes needed for floors and walls. To locate a distributor, contact Quarry Tile at (800) 536-2812 or at www.quarrytile.com.

The LinkUp program team will help Quarry Tile find new markets for its Eco-Tile line.

LinkUp was launched two years ago to encourage manufactures to use recycled content in their products. For more information on LinkUp, visit http://dnr.metrokc.gov/linkup or call Erv Sandlin at (206) 296-0233.

RECYCLING THRIVES IN DOWNTOWN BOISE

The recycling program in downtown Boise, Idaho, diverted more than two tons of recyclables from the Ada County landfill in 2002, according to a report in the Idaho Statesman.

The downtown recycling program has eight permanent recycling centers, accessible at city buildings, parks, coffee shops and businesses.

The downtown centers collected 220 pounds of aluminum cans, 4,400 pounds of newspapers and 180 pounds of plastic beverage containers in 2002.

The program is a partnership among the City of Boise, Capital City Development Corp., Downtown Boise Association and BFI Waste Management Systems.

HONOLULU MAYOR SEEKS TO IMPLEMENT CURBSIDE RECYCLING

Honolulu, Hawaii, Mayor Jeremy Harris is seeking to combat the island of O’ahu’s waste problem with monthly residential recycling collections and automated collection of green waste.

According to a news item in the Honolulu Advertiser, O’ahu currently recycles 500,000 tons of waste annually; however, city officials hope to increase that figure by 69,000 tons by 2005 using the two curbside recycling programs, increasing Honolulu’s recycling rate from 32 percent to 38 percent.

"As island people, we understand well the reality of finite natural resources," Harris said in his State of the City address in January. "If we are to make our island more sustainable, we have to change from a pattern of consumption and waste to one of conservation and reuse."

The proposed curbside programs are intended to persuade residents to recycle by offering monthly curbside pickup of bottles and plastics and making the city’s biweekly pickup of green waste more cost-effective for the city and more convenient for residents, according to the news report.

Three-person city crews collect green waste twice a month currently. An automated collection service, however, would require only one person to operate the truck and eliminate bagging and binding of green waste, according to the Honolulu Advertiser.