For close to two decades, local governments and the waste-hauling industry have been making the wrong investments in recycling. One former CEO of a waste-hauling giant admits that the multibillion-dollar investment in single-stream collection and processing was a big mistake.
Indeed it was. It took the country off the dual-stream track that had grown over 30 years, from the 1970s to the 2000s, driven by grassroots recyclers who developed equipment and procedures and organized citizens to get rules passed that drove recycling rates from below 5 percent of municipal waste to around 34 percent, where it has stagnated since 2010.
By requiring small additional effort by households (separating paper from other recyclables), dual- and multi-stream recycling achieved a high level of purity for the materials, enhancing their marketability. Single-stream recycling (everything jumbled in the same bin) was a convenience, but the price of that convenience was higher levels of contamination. That worked when we could export contaminated wastes to China. But last year China said no, plunging U.S. recycling into disarray exacerbated by the dominance of single-stream collection.
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DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
I'll tell you the wrong way to "recycle." I live in Delmar, De and I live up a long gravel driveway. The two houses at the front of the driveway recycle. As you all know the wind blows constantly here on the shore. Every week both households fill their 32-gallon container with cardboard, plastic bottles, styrofoam, etc... and none of these items are bagged. They fill the containers as full as they can get them and then they set them out in the driveway the night before the trash company comes. By morning the containers have blown over and almost every single piece of trash has blown into my yard. This has happened for about the last 3-4 recycle pick up cycles. THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO RECYCLE. I called DNREC as I was going to report them for dumping trash in my yard. Guess what I was told. It is an act of God. That the wind blows. Well yeah, idiot, but if the person putting the trash knows the wind blows all the time then it is an act of ignorance, not God. Trust me, I am not done with the situation yet. I do not believe it is just OKAY to trash my yard every single week just because the winds blow. Of course, the wind has to change direction. I have a whole lot of paper that needs to be shredded. Be a shame if the container blows over, by an act of God right. But the only ones that will pay will be the neighbors on the other side after the trash blows through the "litters" yard. NOT THE WAY TO RECYCLE.
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