A lot of residents have generally embraced the idea to "keep Fayetteville funky," as the bumper sticker goes, although definitions of precisely what that means differ from person to person. More critically, city leaders have attempted to focus on what it takes to keep Fayetteville forward.
What's that mean? Again, definitions will differ, but we think one could find general agreement that it describes an attitude of embracing change wherever it can make a positive difference for the future.
What’s the point?
A recycling, diversion and trash disposal master plan in Fayetteville will take important steps toward better stewardship of Northwest Arkansas’ physical environment while respected the fiscal needs of the city’s ratepayers.
That explains why aldermen were eager in December 2013 to embrace a proposal brought forward by two of their own, aldermen Matthew Petty and Mark Kinion, to establish as a goal that the city would by 2025 divert from the landfill 80 percent of what its residents and businesses throw out. At that time, the city's so-called "diversion rate" was about 18 percent.
The measure passed unanimously.
Why 80 percent? At the time, it was supported by, well, pretty much nothing. It was a number essentially plucked from thin air. Petty told his fellow members of the City Council the number was designed to communicate to any city-hired consulting firm that Fayetteville wanted an aggressive master plan for reducing the volume of waste from Fayetteville that gets buried in a landfill.
The high percentage goal was the municipal equivalent of "turning it up to 11." (See This is Spinal Tap.)
At tonight's meeting of the Fayetteville City Council, aldermen are set to inject a dose of reality to the number they created a little more than three years ago. That consultant, Florida-based Kessler Consulting, has turned over its $300,000-plus report. The consultants acknowledged the 80 percent goal was essentially a fiction. But getting a better diversion rate -- a much better one -- wasn't.
Their comprehensive report covered it all: a far more aggressive recycling program; food waste composting from restaurants, residents and others; a program to recover and reuse construction waste; potential bans on some materials, such as plastic bags used by retailers.
It is an aggressive plan. Too aggressive, even for a town like Fayetteville that prides itself on doing more than the minimum.
Last week, after residents and aldermen had more than two months to review the consultants' report, the City Council's Water, Sewer and Solid Waste Committee recommended adoption of the plan with its most aggressive elements -- conversion to a single-stream recycling approach and bans on trashing recycling material -- removed. The committee's recommendation is also to set a diversion rate goal of 40 percent.
Single-stream recycling is an approach in which all recyclable materials are collected at curbside in a single vehicle, taken to a materials recovery facility, then separated by machine and workers into marketable lots of paper, plastics, cardboard, glass, etc. It would end the current practice in which a city employee separates the materials at the curb into a truck with different bins.
Converting to single stream would require a major expenditure on a materials recovery facility. We're talking millions. And it makes little sense for Fayetteville to do that by itself. Apparently, the city sought interest from other governments in Northwest Arkansas, but got no none from the bigger towns that would be necessary to make the project make financial sense. Will that change in the future? Will Northwest Arkansas' comfort with throwing its waste into a hole in the ground diminish in the years ahead? Will the region decide it needs to aggressively take responsible action to recycle as much as possible and, better yet, reduce the waste created by retailer packaging on the front end?
We can hope, and Fayetteville officials say they'll keep it all in mind as they move forward, but it makes much more sense in service to Fayetteville residents and businesses not to take on too much. Even with the proposed changes the City Council will consider tonight, Fayetteville can take a responsible step toward better handling of its waste.
While it's vital that communities take critical steps to care for the physical world, we appreciate the recognition in Fayetteville that there's a need to take care of constituents' fiscal world, too.
Commentary on 02/21/2017