Municipal Recycling

The city of Washington, D.C., plans on running its own household recycling program early next year, anticipating the switch from Waste Management Inc., its present vendor, to a city-operated program will improve coverage and service.

A spokeswoman for the Public Works Department says the city planned to take the program back from Waste Management as soon as this year, but pushed the timetable back in light of budgetary problems.

The city hopes to purchase 22 vehicles and containers to collect recyclables. Additionally, the city will hire roughly 70 employees to run the program.

According to local press reports, the city is unhappy with allaged missed pickups and lax service from WMI.

The Washington Post reports that the city offered WMI a five-year contract last fall, but the deal was canceled after Washington, D.C.’s City Council raised objections.

The city hopes to phase out its present contracts, phasing in its own collection program during the year. The program will cover approximately 110,000 households and employ single-stream collection. Currently, Waste Management uses source-separated collection.

 RECYCLING INDUSTRY IN ST. LOUIS EXCEEDS AVERAGE

Recycling in the St. Louis metropolitan area is a leading industry providing nearly 16,000 jobs and generating nearly $5 billion a year in revenue, according to a recent study commissioned by the St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District and conducted by the University of Missouri. The economic impact of the recycling industry in St. Louis exceeds the impact of the industry on a national level by about 25 percent.

According to the Recycling Economic Information Study, the St. Louis recycling industry includes nearly 1,500 businesses that generate $4.9 billion in annual revenue and an annual payroll of about $640 million. Revenues and payroll figures exceed those of local utilities and food/beverage/tobacco industries and are about the same as the local chemical and machine manufacturing industries.

The St. Louis recycling industry includes a wide range of businesses—many of which are locally owned small to mid-sized firms.

"We found that recyclables collection and processing rates are above the national average, which may explain why the St. Louis region is a major center of wholesale trading and brokering of recycled materials," study author Joe Martinich of the College of Business Administration at the University of Missouri-St. Louis says. "St. Louis also is above the national average in the use of recycled materials in manufacturing, remanufacturing and reuse, a somewhat surprising finding."

Martinich and Lee Fox of University Outreach and Extension conducted the study, which was modeled after a nationwide Recycling Economic Information Study done in 2001 by the National Recycling Coalition for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Research methodologies including business surveys, economic census data and statistical analysis were used to compare the St. Louis region with the rest of the country.

The Kansas City, Mo., City Council has approved a five-year contract between the city’s director of Environmental Management and Deffenbaugh Recycling Services.

The contract calls for Deffenbaugh Recycling to handle the collection and marketing of recyclables from the city’s curbside collection program. The contract will start May 1.

Roughly 140,000 households will be involved in the collection program. Along with the five-year contract, council authorized the Environmental Management department to exercise five one-year renewals of the contract, bringing the total potential length of the contract to 10 years.

Council also authorized the expenditure of no more than $1.67 million for the first year of the collection program.

Virtual Scavengers Project, an Indianapolis organization that scavenges for unwanted electronics, has received a grant of $28,700 from the state of Indiana’s Department of Environmental Management (IDEM).

The agency has awarded nine additional recycling grants worth $195,000. IDEM’s recycling grants, made through the Indiana Recycling Grant Program, help divert all types of re-useable products from landfills.

The fund is replenished by a surcharge of $.50 per ton on garbage placed in Indiana’s landfills.

The recipients are: Cedar Lake, Lake County, $15,500 to buy a chipper; Lake Station, Lake County, $15,500 to buy a chipper; Lowell, Lake County, 14,250, to buy a chipper; Munster, Lake County, $8,200 to buy a chipper; Rising Sun, Ohio County, $6,800 to buy a box truck to collect organic waste; Community Thrift Store, Henry County, $14,000 to buy a baler and forklift to divert textile waste; Opportunity Enterprises, Porter County, $29,500 to buy and to install a baler, to conduct promotions and to enhance paper recycling efforts; The Virtual Scavengers Project, Marion County, $28,700, to buy equipment and conduct promotion for electronics recycling; Sulivan County Solid Waste Management District (SWMD), $34,700 to buy equipment to serve an additional four communities, to collect recyclables from a campground and to hold 13 promotions each year; and Monroe County SWMD, $27,500 to buy equipment needed to process cardboard and paper for recycling.

Five local governments in King County, Wash., have received more than $285,000 from the Department of Ecology (Ecology) for projects to reduce and recycle wastes.

King County Solid Waste Division will use $97,000 to convert part of its vehicle fleet to run on ultra-low-sulfur diesel, reducing emissions and other harmful pollutants by up to 90 percent.

Seattle Public Utilities will use $64,800 as part of a media campaign to remind businesses and residents to recycle paper.

A $52,000 award to Public Health-Seattle & King County will help develop policy and procedure guidelines to help local governments implement new state standards for handling solid wastes.

Kirkland will use $50,000 to provide curbside food waste collection to single-family residences citywide.

Bellevue will use $22,500 to host a series of hands-on workshops promoting sustainable building and gardening at Lake Hills Ranger Station.

The supplemental funding is part of Ecology’s Coordinated Prevention Grants program and comes from a state tax paid by wholesale distributors of petroleum and other hazardous materials.

Bill 1275, sponsored by Rep. Angie Paccione and Sen. Jack Taylor, was introduced to the Colorado House in late January. The bill would create a deposit system for beverage containers in the state.

The bill would be fully implemented by July 1, 2006, and would require distributors to pay a deposit of 10 cents on beverage containers beginning Oct. 1, 2004.

The state Department of Local Affairs would administer the program, with 40 percent of the fund’s unredeemed deposits going to the Colorado commission on higher education for student financial assistance.

The outlook for the bill is grim, however. It was assigned to the Information, Technology and Finance Committee, where it was postponed indefinitely in mid-February.