LITTLE ROCK — More than 1,500 tons of recycling are collected each month at the Materials Recovery Facility near the Little Rock Port.
This time last year, before Little Rock and North Little Rock revamped their recycling programs and Sherwood started its first recycling program, the center weighed in about 700 tons of recycling each month.
The single-stream recycling program started in April has more than doubled the old milk jugs, soda bottles, newspapers and boxes that will never make it to the regional landfill in Little Rock.
“We had 700 tons per month in the old system,” said George Wheatley, regional director of public affairs for Waste Management, the private company that contracts to process the recycling from the three cities.
“We added the new carts, and a rewards program for recycling, and paid $5 million to change the facility over to a single-stream system, and now we’re doing 1,500 tons a month. We added the whole city of Sherwood for the first time, which added 10,000 households to the system, but adding 10,000 out of 85,000 would not account for that increase. More people are recycling and they’re recycling more materials.”
Little Rock has been talking trash a lot recently with a proposed increase in the waste disposal fee that residents see on their water bills. The fee is part of the proposed 2013 budget.
The first rate proposal plan included an increase for 2013 and 2014 to help pay for capital needs such as truck replacement and new landfill cells. That proposed rate was reduced after several Little Rock city directors said they could not support a large increase when residents were already asked to reach in their pocket for increases in their water bills, sewer bills, a city sales tax increase and an extension in the millage rate to pay for road repair and drainage work on city streets — all passed in the last two years.
A revised plan lowered that proposed rate to a one-year increase, and a third proposal lowered the proposed increase further to only include an increase in recycling fees to pay for the cost of the new program.
That proposed rate increase now includes an additional $1.03 a month starting in January, if the budget is approved.
Residents will have four chances to comment on the proposed increase and the rest of the budget at public hearings scheduled at 5 p.m. Monday at the Northwest Police Substation on Kanis Road and at 7 p.m. Monday at the Dunbar Community Center on 16th Street. Two hearings will also be held Wednesday at the Roosevelt Thompson Library on Rahling Circle, starting at 5 p.m., and at the Southwest Community Center on Base Line Road at 7 p.m.
In April, Little Rock and North Little Rock customers saw a switch in their recycling programs when shiny green and yellow 64-gallon carts showed up on their doorsteps to replace the 18-gallon bins that residents in those cities had been using for more than a decade.
Sherwood residents also got the new carts, which gave about 10,000 households in that city curbside recycling pick-up for the first time.
The program switched weekly pickup in Little Rock and North Little Rock to once every two weeks. It also simplified the recycling process by switching from a two-stream method — one for bottles and cans and a second for paper and cardboard — to a single-stream method that takes all the recyclables at once to be sorted by a new $5 million machine that rattles, blows, shakes and collects by magnets the different materials that can be recycled.
“There were a few hiccups in the beginning, but we haven’t had any out of the ordinary or big problems in months,” said Ronny Loe, assistant director of Little Rock Public Works. “It’s increased our participation and been a really big positive for us.”
For Little Rock alone, Loe said the tonnage has increased by more than 3,000 tons to about 6,200 tons over the sixmonth period of April through October compared with the same time last year.
Recycling participation has spiked in all three cities, with overall participation increasing from about 30 percent to about 80 percent in the past six months compared with the same time last year.
The new machinery and the larger bins do carry a cost, however. The Little Rock Board of Directors voted to absorb that increased cost for one year into the city’s general fund budget when the board approved the program in late 2011.
A year later, the city is now deciding how to deal with that new cost, which has led to the proposed increase in recycling fees in the 2013 budget.
Leaders in the other two cities chose to pass on those fees in different ways.
Sherwood’s City Council passed on the full $2.76 cost to customers at the start of the program in April. North Little Rock residents were paying $2.20 a month last year, and the North Little Rock City Council raised that fee by 56 cents earlier this year to make up the full $2.76.
Little Rock’s proposed increase for recycling — $1.03 — would make Little Rock’s recycling rates even with the other two cities. A staff member said Friday that the last increase in 2004 put the rate paid by residents at $1.73 per month.
A staff member said the city had been paying $2.07 a month per household in its contract with the recycling firm, without increasing resident rates. The city then absorbed the additional 67 cents charged per household under the new contract that started in April.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/09/2012