As recycling grows in popularity and the process becomes more sophisticated and user-friendly, more people are participating in the effort.
In April 2012, Little Rock residents' 18-gallon recycling bins were replaced with 64-gallon green and yellow wheeled carts and the recycling system changed from dual-stream requiring the customer to separate recyclables to single-stream in which all recyclables are mixed together.
With that change, the number of homes participating in the program leaped.
"The change led to the city's recycling participation rates more than doubling and it tripled the city's recycling tonnage," says Melinda Glasgow, the city's sustainability officer.
In Little Rock, where 58,000 homes can potentially join the program, the participation rate increased from about 35 percent to more than 80 percent, Glasgow says. And volume has tripled from about 30 tons a day to 90 tons a day since the service converted to the single-stream method in spring 2012.
Another difference -- there's less paper, magazines and bills -- the heaviest common item for the amount of space it takes up -- being recycled in the last few years, Glasgow says.
"More people now pay their bills online and others have stopped getting catalogs in the mail," she explains.
As a member of the Regional Recycling and Waste Reduction District (formerly the Pulaski County Regional Solid Waste Management District), the city of Little Rock entered into a seven-year contract with Waste Management Inc. The district's other four cities also signing on and moving to single-stream recycling include North Little Rock, Jacksonville, Sherwood and Maumelle. North Little Rock and Sherwood moved to the single-stream method in 2012 and Maumelle adopted it this past winter.
WIDENING THE SCOPE
Little Rock's new system has brought with it the ability to recycle some previously unrecyclable items including:
aerosol cans
juice cartons
metal cooking utensils such as pots and pans
milk jugs
rigid plastics including plastic butter containers, laundry baskets and the containers in which potted plants are sold
"And at this time of the year, in the spring, there are a ton of containers for plants and flowers coming in," Glasgow says.
What happens to the recyclables after the collection truck rolls away?
In central Arkansas, they head to Waste Management's Recycle America Materials Recovery Facility at 7900 Sloane Drive in Little Rock's Port Industrial Park. Inside the recycling center -- a three-story, steel-sided warehouse structure nicknamed "Murf" (from its acronym MRF) -- 25 employees focus on sorting items and culling out those which aren't acceptable. The recyclables are then baled and sold.
At the cavernous facility, recycling trucks enter through large, gaping doors to spill their haul of consumer castoffs onto the concrete floor. A worker driving a wheel loader skillfully sorts the tangled mess into mounds of like materials -- cardboard and paper commingle in one pile, plastics another and metals, a third. The mounds are then pushed onto a conveyor belt flush with the floor that hauls them to the second floor to manned stations where workers further sort them. There are also unmanned sorting areas such as the one where strong magnets cull metal materials from the belt.
The center, built 17 years ago, was remodeled with a $5 million upgrade and reopened as a single-stream recycling center when the collection system changed in 2012, said Rusty Miller, who manages the facility.
"We are now handling about 100 tons a day of curbside materials," he said. Materials, collected once every other week from each participating residence or business, add up to nearly 100,000 containers in the areas of central Arkansas his company serves.
LIGHTER, BIGGER LOADS
As soda cans and plastic drink bottles become lighter and thinner and with less paper arriving, the facility is seeing overall tonnage decreasing but the amount of items increasing.
"We have more volume coming in than weight," Miller said.
So who buys this stuff and what do they do with it?
The material is converted into a lot of different products -- carpet, plastic drink containers and ceiling tiles created from recycled newspapers.
"We sell mixed paper to one company and cardboard to another," he said.
The glass, which the company accepts but would prefer not to because there is not a large market and it must be sorted by color, is sold to a company that makes fiberglass insulation and industrial grinding discs from it.
"The carpet in this room is made from plastic drink bottles," he added, motioning to the floor of the first-floor meeting room, which overlooks the sorting floor.
Nearby, a collection of some of the more unusual unacceptable items that have come through the facility are displayed for visitors.
"We call this our Hall of Fame of Do Not Recycle Items," he said with a chuckle. It includes a vintage wooden tennis racket, an array of weapons -- a .22 rifle, pellet gun and a third rifle bent and apparently held together with black electrical tape, a machete and a Japanese-style sword -- a fire extinguisher, plastic-encased electrical wiring wound on a large spool, a plastic and rubber boat paddle, a bowling ball and pin, and an ornate concrete architectural element.
"Bowling must be going out of style," Miller said. "Since the beginning of the year, we've gotten at least 12 bowling balls but we've only gotten one pin."
GETTING IT RIGHT
He said the majority of those who are recycling are doing so correctly with about 15 percent of what arrives at the facility ultimately needing to be taken to the landfill.
"Most people do it right," Miller said, even though a list of what's accepted and what's not is embossed on the top of each recycling cart. "Most of the mistakes are unintentional; they just don't follow the directions."
His advice to those recycling?
"It's not a trash can; don't use it as an overflow for trash," he said. "Every lid has a list of acceptable materials. Read it and if there's any doubt, don't include it."
Seemingly simple things can pose a hazard for the facility's workers and machines.
"A jump rope can shut us down," Miller said. "If something gets wrapped around the equipment, if the machine feels any resistance, the motors will shut down. Other items are garden hoses, Christmas lights and extension cords. They could get wrapped around the shaft of the machine and if a worker grabs at it as it comes by, if it gets wrapped around him and the shaft, it could pull him into the machine."
What about newspapers tied with string?
"We can handle that," he said, explaining that by the time the bundle makes it through the facility, the string will have already been broken along the way.
"We have one fellow -- I don't know who he is or where he lives -- but he feels the need to tie up all of his milk jugs with a cord and when we receive that, we have to stop and cut it," he says. "The system is designed to have things flow through it."
While some unacceptable items are simply annoying, others can be dangerous.
"Our biggest concern and hazard is any type of medical waste," Miller said, pointing out a large glass jar filled with dozens of used hypodermic needles that someone had attempted to recycle. "Our workers wear gloves and arm guards that are needle proof and almost bullet proof, protecting them up to the elbows, but this will shut us down faster than anything."
Another hazard is the unknown.
"Don't bag your items," he said, " just put them in the cart loose."
"When a black bag comes in, we can't see in it so we don't open it. Instead, it goes straight to the trash," Miller says. "We have opened them, they usually contain yard clippings, Styrofoam cups or dirty diapers.
"We've got our workers suited up but it's not right to ask them to go through dirty baby diapers," he said.
A couple of other things Miller hates to see coming into the facility as much as soiled diapers and hypodermic needles?
"Two things I don't like to see in the recycling carts are Bibles and American flags and I tell the schoolchildren coming through on the tours that." Whenever he or his employees see a Bible or a U.S. flag, they pull them out, set them aside and Miller delivers the Bibles to a local rescue mission and the flags to a local Veterans of Foreign Walls hall.
HomeStyle on 05/10/2014