Recycling is paying off, but there's still work to be done

By David Steinkraus

Monday, January 31, 2005 2:07 AM CST

RACINE - Recycling is starting to look a little greener in more than one sense of the word.

It's always been a smart thing from an environmental standpoint. You spend less energy digging raw materials out of the ground or building them from scratch on one end.

"I think one of the things we could look at very selfishly is that it could make the landfill last a lot longer before we have to build another one," said John Berge, conservation chairman of the local branch of the Sierra Club.

And now the days when recycling was a big money-losing proposition seem to be fading.

How much The amount of municipal solid waste diverted for recycling has been fluctuating between 1.4 million tons and 1.5 million tons since 1999, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.

Last year, the city of Racine collected 5,260 tons of recyclable items, said Richard Jones, the city's public works commissioner. While that sounds like plenty, Racine citizens fall below the rest of the state.

If you take that tonnage and divide it by the 82,000 people who lived here in 2000, you find that the city collected 256 pounds of recyclables per person. In 2003, according to the DNR, municipalities with 50,000 to 100,000 people collected 276 pounds of recyclables per person.

Collections were better in the 1990s when statewide per capita recycling was more than 300 pounds per person. And, according to a detailed waste study done for the DNR, in the year 2000 only 67 percent of newspapers produced and 55% of aluminum cans were recovered for

recycling.

Changing ideas Aside from what is has been doing, the state is now encouraging alternate uses for some waste which isn't banned from landfills but which is still taking up space, said Cynthia Moore, 53, recycling program coordinator and team leader for the DNR.

For example, she said, the state is encouraging restaurants and other large food companies to compost their waste rather than send it to a landfill.

Another example is untreated wood. Most comes from building demolition and represents about 12 percent of the total weight of material going into municipal landfills, Moore said, yet it can be used as mulch or for erosion control. Not only does that save the cost of hauling demolition waste, but there's no need to buy new wood. "Somebody said it's like landfilling cash," she said.

You dutifully separate your newspapers from your plastics, and then think it odd when the city worker throws both together into the same truck. It looks odd, but it isn't, and better yet, it pays.

At the moment it pays $3 per ton. That, said Jones, is what the city's current contract calls for, and as deals go it's a good one. In 1995 the city was paying about $75 a ton to have its recyclables processed, and just two years ago it was paying about $45 a ton, he said. "And that, at that time, was considered a very good rate."

What has changed in the city's favor, he said, are efficiencies which recyclable processors have achieved and a wider choice of firms available because the city partners with Green Valley disposal to ship recyclables. Efficiency plus competition for the large amount of waste resulted in a contract which paid money back, he said.

All the recyclables are dumped into one large truck and shipped to Rockford, Ill., where they're sorted, Jones said. Combining recyclables here - called single-stream recycling - has also allowed the city to use four one-man trucks instead of six, he said.

While good, the $15,000 payment for recyclables doesn't cover the expense, Jones said. Combined with more than $390,000 in state grant money, it doesn't equal the $1.4 million which the city spends on its total recycling operation, which also includes taking care of old tires, leaves, brush, and lawn waste.

Plastic rules "Public education is most needed and one of the hardest things to do," said Berge, of the Sierra Club. He was talking about plastics.

You may think, as he has, that the city of Racine accepts only plastics marked 1 or 2 in the little triangle that designates the plastic types. That's what the city's Web site says, too, if you read the PDF document that provides recycling instructions.

In fact, Jones said, the city now accepts plastic types 1 through 7. The Web site information hasn't been updated recently, he said, because the city recycling coordinator job disappeared in budget cuts.

No limit There is no reason, however, why anyone should feel limited by what government does or encourages. Mary McIlvaine doesn't.

McIlvaine, 49, who lives near Downtown Racine, puts recyclables out at the curb, of course. "I pick up bottles and cans when I'm out walking my dog because I'm tired of looking at them."

But she also composts her kitchen waste. It doesn't smell, she said, because she has learned how to aerate the pile. Nor does she put in the pile any animal waste, meat scraps, or oils, nothing to attract wild animals. She only has to turn the piles once a year, and the result is rich, loamy soil good for her flowers.

She and her husband save junk mail, too, the sheets of paper printed on only one side. Those go through their computer printer for unimportant jobs. "That will save people a lot on their paper. It's not like going to computers has cut down a lot on paper," she said.

Recycling is more than recycling, Berge said. It comes down to the three R's - reduce, reuse, and recycle. "You can't just worry about one."

People put out blue bags with recyclables, he said, yet bring home nonreuseable items from stores. They fill two, three, or four trash cans a week.

"That is not a sign of a sustainable society when we throw out that much all the time," he said.

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