Recycling is a critical component of Fayetteville's triple-bottom line approach to sustainability - environment, economy and equity. Fayetteville's current recycling program is excellent, but it must be expanded to reduce the amount of recyclable materials going to the landfill.
Dedicated and professional staff with the city's Recycling and Trash Collections Division operate a curb sort recycling program that produces clean materials the city can sell for top dollar.
While Fayetteville's curb sort recycling program does an excellent job serving single-family households and small businesses, the program has limitations. The curb sort system is not scalable and therefore cannot serve large businesses or large multi-family residential complexes. Nearly half of Fayetteville's residents live in multi-family housing and must drive to a drop-off location to participate. From an equity perspective, how is it fair that residents in single-family homes enjoy the convenience of curb side recycling, while apartment dwellers must drive to drop-off locations? Not only is this not sustainable from an equity standpoint, but it is also unsustainable from an environmental perspective. The result of this disparity is that significant amounts of recyclables generated at multi-family complexes are not being collected and therefore are not recycled.
Recent waste audits determined that 30 percent of the waste Fayetteville sends to the landfill could be recycled in the city's current program. This amounts to more than 20,000 tons of aluminum cans, glass bottles, cardboard boxes, paper and plastic containers that get buried in the Tontitown landfill every year. These highly valuable and easily recyclable materials are landfilled instead of being recycled because they cannot be collected by the current curb sort program. From an economic and environmental perspective, this is not sustainable.
Some have suggested education and more recycling drop-off locations would increase participation and reduce the amount of recyclable materials that go to the landfill. This scenario was actually modeled as part of the city's Solid Waste Reduction, Diversion & Recycling Master Plan and could result in a very slight increase in participation and material diversion. The other option modeled in the city's plan is single-stream Recycling.
In that model, single-stream produces a marked increase in material diversion and participation mainly due to expanded access for large businesses and multi-family complexes. Beyond modeling, the success of single-stream has been proven in Fayetteville and in countless other communities across the country. Two single-stream pilot projects conducted in Fayetteville during the spring of 2016 doubled the volume of recyclable materials collected. Additionally, a December 2016 EPA report on the state of curbside recycling analyzed over 400 communities and found that 82 percent of cities with curbside recycling use single-stream and of the top performing communities, 96 percent have single-stream.
By no means in single-stream the silver bullet that will solve all of Fayetteville's recycling challenges. Robust education and outreach must accompany a single-stream program to limit contamination. The city of Fayetteville's Recycling and Trash Collections Division, with its history of exemplary recycling education and excellent curb side recycling service, is up to the challenge. This expansion of recycling access will allow Fayetteville to continue to be a sustainability leader across our state and region.
Commentary on 01/14/2017