Public outreach makes county’s recycling program a success

By Charles Taylor
Senior Staff Writer

Less has turned out to be more when it comes to Pierce County, Wash.’s curbside recycling program.

Under a new automated single-cart recycling program begun in 2005, the county stopped accepting glass bottles and jars. Yet, in the program’s first full year, other items set out at the curb increased 88 percent.

“A number of jurisdictions in Washington are now converting to this identical program,” said Steve Wamback, Pierce County’s solid waste administrator, “and most of them have run into strong opposition from folks about getting rid of the glass.”

However, in Pierce County, glass collections had fallen to less than two pounds per household and residents were clamoring for more automation.

At the same time, haulers no longer wanted the burden of collecting glass – there wasn’t a strong market for it, and had it been commingled with paper, broken glass could contaminate recyclable paper, lowering its value.

While Pierce’s program no longer picks up glass at the curb, residents can take it to drop-off sites around the county.

Wamback believes early public education helped defuse resistance to dropping glass from the curbside program, which has about 142,000 participants.

“We promoted the program heavily well before the program launched,” Wamback explained. “Two years before we actually had final program approval (from the County Council), we began a public outreach process.”

Previously, the county had a “three bins and a sack” curbside program: residents set out three 12-gallon plastic bins – one for glass, one for newspapers and one for cans. Mixed paper was placed in a paper sack next to the bins.

In the new program, residents received a 96-gallon cart to recycle paper, plastic bottles, aluminum and tin. Under the old program, waste haulers picked up the three bins by hand; the new program uses automated trucks to lift and empty the larger carts.

Wamback said the outreach process educated the public about potential changes, costs and benefits, and environmental tradeoffs of various recycling programs through newsletters, surveys, focus groups, public hearings and the Web. The effort cost the county $500,000 to $750,000, Wamback said, or a few dollars per household participating in the recycling program.

Local waste haulers and the paper industry also had input into the program — particularly about the consequences of keeping glass in the curbside program. “We were involved from the ground floor up,” said Keith Kovalenko, a district manager with Waste Connections, Inc., the parent company of several local waste haulers.

He added, “We were the ones that really pushed to have the glass not included in the bins” and moving to an automated system that would mean fewer injuries for his pick-up crews. Removing glass from the curbside program also lowered the risk of recyclable paper being contaminated with glass shards, which can damage pulp processors’ equipment.

“Since we’ve gone to the fully automated system,” he said, “our injuries are really nullified. I’d say probably that we had one or two a month prior; now we have maybe one a year.” The lifting and physical demands of the prior method also led to frequent employee turnover, which, since the system was automated, has decreased by a factor of 10, Kovalenko said. 

Pierce County began reevaluating its recycling program after adopting a new solid waste management plan in 2000. One of its recommendations was to see if recycling participation rates were still meeting targets — 90 percent of households and 40 pounds per household per month. Wamback said they found participation had dropped below 90 percent and recycling volume was about 25 pounds per household and falling. The county realized the program needed “a shot in the arm.”

The new program has been exactly that. Residents now do less pre-sorting and have the desired automation. During the program’s first full year, according to a county study:

• Overall recycling tonnage increased nearly 70 percent.
• Not counting glass, items set out at the curb increased 88 percent.
• Recycling households raised their average pounds per month to 44.35 pounds.
• Residents began to dispose of less recyclable material in their garbage, dropping their monthly average by almost 20 pounds, and
• Glass drop-sites captured approximately 63 percent of the glass that was previously collected when the three-bins system was in place.

The program also has tangible benefits for customers. Those who recycle get a commodity credit on their bimonthly garbage bills, based on the fluctuation in market prices the haulers get for recyclables. Because the program resulted in increased tonnage and less contaminated recyclables, the haulers make more money.

Kovalenko explained, “The more money that we can make off the sale of the recyclables, the better the commodity credit that our customers receive for the recyclables that they put out at the curb.” The current credit is about $1.68 per month. Under the old program, it was about 28 cents per month.

The county also reaps value from the new program, Wamback said. “The more people recycle, the longer the local landfill capacity will last” — important at a time when it’s becoming more difficult to site new landfills.

(Model Programs from the Nation’s Counties highlights Achievement Award-winning programs. For more information on this and other NACo Achievement Award winners, visit NACo’s Web site, www.naco.org   Resource  Library   Model  CountyPrograms.)