Recycling Rates Rise

recycling paper Maybe it's the recession like it was in the early 90s, but as a city, we're recycling more than ever before.

Mayor Greg Nickels announced today that Seattle set a new city record for recycling rates in 2006, with 47.5 percent of the city's residential, commercial and self-haul waste heading to recycling bins instead of the landfills.

That’s a good thing. Did you know that every single day, we send a mile-long train filled with trash to a landfill in Oregon?

Anyway, for the first time, companies last year recycled more than they threw out, diverting almost 52 percent of their waste to recycling bins. Single-family homeowners also did a bang-up job, recycling a whopping 64 percent of their waste. Unfortunately, those of us living in apartments and condos didn’t do as well. We recycled an abysmal 26.3 percent of our waste. What gives, folks? We live in a condo and between our food-waste bin and recycling boxes, we end up having to take out the actual trash once every three weeks or so. It’s not hard. Let's show those uppity single-family homeowners how it's done! (If your building doesn’t have a yard waste container, talk to the manager. SPU will be happy to set them up with weekly or twice-monthly pickups for very little money.)

Speaking of food waste, we’re all doing a good job of diverting that too. Though 30 percent of our waste stream is made up of compostable scraps, each month the 100,000 households with yard waste bins are sending 82 pounds of food scraps and grass clippings to Cedar Grove. That’s 12 additional pounds per month over 2004.

The best news about recycling today is that it’s only going to get better, thanks to new efforts to expand the city’s recycling and composting programs. According to SPU, in 2009 all single-family homes will be offered curbside yard waste and food scrap bins which will be picked up weekly (for the first time, meat and dairy will be allowed in to the bins) and all other recyclable material will be able to go into one bin (at last!). Finally, more kinds of plastic will also be recyclable so that all plastic food containers (not just the round ones) will be allowed into the bins.

That really cool photo of paper recycling was taken by Todd Sackman and placed, kindly, in the Seattlest Flickr Pool.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Charles Redell in News on March 5, 2008 12:03 PM

Comments [rss]

Troy Morris

That's 8 kinds of awesome.

Charles Redell

yes. it all goes to Cedar Grove where they pile it under these massive tarps for not very long (we're talking weeks here) and turn it into compost that they bag and sell. As the program grows, a lot of the compost will be given back to the city for use in parks and such.

Troy Morris

Oh cool! Do those yard-waste services go to a compost? I just like the idea of compost because... well... it turns into dirt and buying dirt for plants just seems so wrong.

Charles Redell

Troy,

Apartments don't need on-site composting. All they need is yard-waste service because food scraps (other than meat and cheese) including pizza boxes and other paper goods with food on it goes in there.

Small buildings can get basic service for like, $5 a month. Larger buildings may need to get more pickups or a bigger bin so each building manager needs to get in touch with SPU to figure out their building's needs. It's still gonna be cheap though.

Troy Morris

I really think the issue in apartments is two fold:

1) Food waste. Many don't have compost gardens. So either get one or give your food waste to the bums- which leads me to fold number 2-

2) Bums. I think the bums just start moving trash around just to mess with the man.

MonkeyPilot

Same here! We downsized our trash can from 32 to 20-gal, and with a little more effort could probably squeeze it down to the micro (12 gallon). I think the bulk of our remaining trash is actually packaging of one sort or another. Plastic clamshells, in particular, are a terrible waste. As glad as I am to see various places banning plastic bags, I really hope packaging, and clamshells in particular, are next!

Katelyn

Since we started using a food/yard waste container at our house, our trash volume has gone down significantly. It's kind of inspiring, actually, and serves as a reminder to be careful how much "packaging" we're willing to tolerate in our house in the first place. Plastic bags, pizza boxes, etc... The only complaint I have is that meat (old chicken) and dairy (old cheese) can't go in the food bin yet. Good news about 2009!