City Cashes In On Rising Recycling

Trash is down. Recycling is up. And the city is reaping the benefits — to the tune of $2 million.

Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts shared that figure last week as the mayor unveiled his proposed $486.8 million budget for the coming fiscal year.

The budget includes a reduction of $250,000 from the Department of Public Works trash collection budget. That reflects an equivalent surplus the department is running in the current fiscal year, he said. That’s because of $2 million in annual net savings on trash and recycling, compared with the 2006 – 2007 budget year, according to Smuts.

Initially, that savings was due to a decrease in the amount of garbage being thrown out in the city (see graph), which was probably a function of the economic downturn, Smuts said. He said more recent refuse-collection savings are due to an increase in recycling.

The city still has a long way to go in raising recycling rates, especially in Dwight, Fair Haven, the Hill and Edgewood. Officials say they plan to keep working on those rates, which could produce more future budget savings.

The city saves money when recycling goes up because it gets paid for recyclables, instead of having to pay out to get rid of municipal waste.

The savings are an indication of success in the city’s transition to a different kind of recycling — not only instituting single-stream pick-up but also using entirely different receptacles. It’s the kind of large-scale changeover that requires altering ingrained habits, the kind that can be difficult for a city of 130,000 to roll out and ramp up in all neighborhoods.

In a gradual process starting in the summer of 2010, the homes along each weekday’s various trash pickup routes were given new brown Toters, the wheeled plastic refuse receptacles the city uses for garbage collection. The new brown Toters were for trash, taking the place of the old blue Toters. Those larger blue Toters were shifted to recycling duty.

With a new bigger bin for recycling, along with an education push by the city, recycling rates have risen.

“Basically, we’ve been able to double or triple our recycling rates in each neighborhood since they’ve gotten their rollout,” said Giovanni Zinn, an environmental consultant in the Office of Sustainability. ​“It’s very positive and that’s what you see reflected in the budget.”

Statistics for the first month and a half or 2012 indicate that recycling rates for most neighborhoods are in the 21 to 28 percent range. Westville and Beaver Hills — the Monday collection route — are leading the pack, with recycling comprising 28 percent of collected refuse there.

The Wednesday collection route — the Hill, Dwight, and some of Edgewood — is lagging behind. Recycling comprised only 14 percent of curbside pickup there in the first month and a half of the year, Zinn said.

The Wednesday route was the last to switch over to using the bigger blue Toters for recycling. Even before the change, Wednesday had the lowest recycling rates, Zinn said. Fourteen percent is still better than the 3 to 5 percent recycling rate the area had previously, Zinn said.

Education is the key to keeping recycling rate on the rise, Zinn said. He said he and Office of Sustainability head Christine Eppstein-Tang have been to all community management team meetings and also take advantage of things like Mayor’s Night Out meetings to spread the word about recycling.

“We’re trying to reach as much of the population as we can,” he said.

One common confusion stems from the fact that the city no longer uses the side-loading recycling collection trucks it once did, Zinn said. Recycling is now collected in trucks that look just like the regular garbage trucks.

The public works guys who pick up the trash also play a role in getting the numbers up.

On Friday morning, Rafael Rivas and Lonnie Shepard were finishing up recycling pick-up on Marion Street in Morris Cove. Shepard said they check every Toter before they load it into the truck to make sure recycling collection isn’t contaminated by a Toter full of regular trash.

It’s usually not a problem in the East Shore, Shepard said. ​“Over here is good.”

Zinn said the East Shore and the rest of Friday’s route has a 25 percent recycling rate.

It’s less good in Fair Haven, the Hill, and Dwight, said Shepard.

In the ​“inner city,” the rates are lower because there are more high-turnover rentals, said refuse supervisor Edwin Martinez. ​“If the landlord lives at the home you get a lot better compliance.”

If a collector does hit upon a blue Toter contaminated with garbage, the driver of the truck makes a note of the address, Martinez said. The house receives a ​“DPE Waste Collection Notice” (pictured) informing the occupant of the problem. Another copy is sent by mail.

It’s not a citation, Martinez said. But if contamination is a repeated problem, the city’s public space inspector is notified and can issue a ticket for littering.

That hasn’t happened yet, said Smuts. The city is focusing on education before enforcement. It’s not likely to happen either, not before a meeting with the Board of Aldermen, Smuts said.

Before the city starts handing out tickets for not recycling properly, there should be a public conversation about it with aldermen and probably revisions to the fines for failure to recycle, Smuts said. That might happen later this year or next year.

Aldermen can be key to recycling rates, said Martinez. In Fair Haven, the rollout of the new Toters was accompanied by a big push by the local aldermen. The neighborhood hit the 20-percent range relatively quickly.

Other education efforts, even the most basic, are sometimes less successful. Martinez pointed out a plastic bag containing an instructional pamphlet attached to a now-not-so-new brown Toter on Marion Street. It was untouched and unread.