Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
REALITY OF RECYCLING: ‘IF IN DOUBT, THROW OUT’
If you fear that some of the stuff you’ve recycled is winding up at the landfill, you’re right. And the situation could get worse.
New contracts for recycling could cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and force residents to do a better job of keeping non-recyclables out of their recycling bins.
If they don’t, the cost will go up even more, and more could wind up in the landfill.
Recycling programs are in a crisis nationwide as China, historically the leading buyer of U.S. recyclables, stopped accepting loads of mixed paper and mixed plastic this year. It also has set more stringent standards for the quality of materials it will take.
In addition, people are recycling more material than the market can absorb. When recycling programs don’t have a buyer for a product, they have little choice but to send the materials to the dump.
The crisis is making local recycling programs more expensive at the same time the value of their recycled material has diminished.
Seventeen Broward cities in particular are feeling the effects of the recycling difficulties. Their current
recycling contracts end Monday. The firm they signed with, the Sun-Bergeron Joint Venture, is not renewing those contracts, forcing most of the cities to turn to Waste Management to provide recycling at a much higher charge — going from $51.15 a ton to $96 a ton for processing the material.
If residents don’t improve their recycling habits — and keep non-recyclable waste separate from the recyclables — Waste Management could reject truckloads it deems too contaminated and then charge a city for hauling the material away to be dumped.
Some cities could end up taking their recyclables directly to south Broward incinerators to be burned in the waste-to-energy plant — hardly the type of recycling residents had in mind when they took the time to separate materials and placed them in recycling bins.
“At least for the short term, I think that’s something that some cities are going to have to look at,” said Sunrise City Manager Richard Salamon, whose city has yet to come to an agreement with Waste Management. Salamon fears Waste Management has created a new monopoly in the county.
“This is a very difficult situation. We really are stuck here. We have only bad options,” Salamon said.
Keeping non-recyclables and other contaminants out of the recycling stream is more difficult in Broward County, which has “singlestream recycling,” which means residents put paper, glass, bottles and cans all into the same recycling cart.
“Whenever you give somebody a 96-gallon cart, residents want to fill it,” said Willie Puz, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Solid Waste Authority. Palm Beach County residents use separate containers, a yellow bin for paper and cardboard and a blue bin for plastic, glass and cans.
Plastic bags don’t belong in residential recycling bins put out at the curb. Neither do polystyrene containers — like the ones restaurants use for leftovers or take-out meals — even if the container has a recycling triangle on it. Grease-stained pizza boxes and wet paper are no-nos, too, as they will ruin the rest of the paper and cardboard they’re mixed with at recycling facilities.
“There’s a lot of ‘wish’ recycling that’s going on,” Puz said.
Waste Management says it sees roughly 30 percent contamination in the recyclables coming into its Broward facility, while Palm Beach County says its contamination has been between 8 percent and 9 percent of the recycling stream.
In 2016, the most recent year figures are available, Broward County recycled about 1.2 million of the 3.6 million tons of solid waste it collected, or 34 percent. It received credit for another 484,000 tons of trash burned at a waste-to-energy facility to produce electricity, giving it an overall 48 percent recycling percentage.
Palm Beach County recycled 1.4 million of the 3.1 million tons of waste it collected, or 45 percent. It received credit for 828,000 tons of waste it incinerated, for an overall 72 percent recycling rate. Miami-Dade County recycled about 1.4 million of the 4.4 million tons it collected, or 33 percent. It was credited with 438,000 tons of waste burned to produce energy, giving it an overall 43 percent recycling rate.
Florida has a goal of having 75 percent of its solid waste recycled by 2020 — that includes garbage and trash burned in incinerators to produce electricity — but it’s not likely the goal will be achieved, as the Broward and Miami-Dade figures show. The state also is concerned about the contamination and the threat it poses to recycling success.
It has started a new “Rethink. Reset. Recycle.” campaign, where it asks people to focus on recycling a few basic items: Aluminum and steel cans, plastic bottles and jugs, paper and cardboard.
“When in doubt, throw it out,” the state campaign says. It’s better to throw out something that is recyclable than to include something that isn’t and risk contaminating a load of “good” recyclables.
Dawn McCormick, a spokeswoman for Waste Management, said there’s still a lot more recycling of the basics that can be done. Fewer than one out of every five empty aluminum cans — one of the highest-value recyclables — or plastic bottles ever gets placed in a recycling bin, McCormick said.
She said it could take a better job by residents to really improve the recycling numbers.
“If you’re out driving, drinking a bottle of water, drive those materials home,” McCormick said. “Rather than throw it in the garbage, take it home and recycle it.”