State faces new recycling challenges
The collapse of the market for recyclable material may soon cause major changes — and a bigger commitment — in the way Connecticut residents separate their waste for curbside collection.
With one of the worst redemption rates in the United States for cans and glass, state lawmakers this year are poised to finally double the nickeldeposit law to 10 cents per item, and for the first time in the 39-year-old program include non-carbonated beverages such as wine, distilled spirits, sports drinks and iced teas.
Experts say that raising the deposit charges and expanding the beverage types, are the best ways to increase the state’s dismal — 50 percent — return rate, while providing clean material for reuse. Currently, even clean glass picked up at the curb is mostly destined as top dressing for out-of-state landfills.
Cans, bottles, paper goods and plastics are choking the state’s collection industry, and a lack of adherence to the recycling rules on the part of under-educated, or uncaring consumers is exacerbating the problem, said Jennifer Heaton-Jones, executive director of the Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority, in the 11-town region including Danbury.
“If we expand the bottle bill to wine and spirits, we would be providing a much more sustainable system to collect it,” Heaton-Jones said Friday. “Glass in the blue bin does not work, no matter what. Garbage and recycling should be more like a consumer’s utility cost than anything else. We do need to increase the reason for people to bring it back.”
Even so-called nips, the tiny booze containers that litter roadsides, would be subject to deposits.
Heaton-Jones said the so-called single-stream recycling, in the big blue curbside is great in theory, but in reality, too many people contaminate their weekly collections with everything from empty propane tanks to rubber garden hoses, or even inappropriate glass, such as baking dishes.
“I don’t think we should have ever gone to single stream,” she said. “If everyone is recycling right and putting in only items they should, single stream works, but right now we have high contamination, low-grade-value material and high costs.”
What environmental experts say the state needs the most is increased consumer awareness on the recycling industry, where over the last year the end of China’s acceptance of material has resulted in soaring costs for local single-stream collections. After years of generating revenue for towns and cities, recycling pickups now cost many local governments more than trash pickups.