Philadelphia expands recycling, but not all is well

Recycling across the country is not entirely mainstreamed yet, according to figures from 2007 to 2008 (the most recent available), just 11% of all the USA’s garbage was recycled. Environmentalists point to figures such as these for the reason why landfills are running out, pollution is increasing and the environment is suffering.

Indeed, the 236 million tons of garbage produced by the United States every year takes a heavy toll on the environment and without question recycling is the way forward in terms of developing more sustainable ways of living. But, as is so often the case with these things, it comes down to money and convenience.

Recycling is not convenient. In some towns and cities in the US, Philly among them, there are separate waste streams for recycling (glass, plastics, tins, paper etcetera). This requires several different boxes or trash cans in the kitchen or out the back for the different materials to be put into and those materials that are not accepted by the city for recycling need to be taken to a recycling plant that will accept them.

Many plastics, for example, have not been accepted in the past by the city council as they are difficult to recycle due to their grade of plastic and the different methods needed to melt down and recycle different plastics creates a disincentive for some recycling plants. The grade of plastic is designated by the number on the bottom of plastic items in a small triangle that is the internationally recognized symbol for recycling.

The recycling numbers range from 1 through to 7 and cover a range of plastic types from juice bottles and rigid containers (no. 3), margarine lids and tubs (no. 4), yogurt containers and deli trays (no.5) and so on.

The problem in Philadelphia for years has been that only numbers 1 and 2, milk bottles, soda bottles and the like, were accepted for pick up and they had to be in separate bins to paper, tin and other materials for recycling.

But this is all due to change. The city is keen to improve its recycling rates, which have grown significantly in recent years.  The current rate of 16%, measured by weight rather than household participation, is well-above the 5.5% of waste that was being recycled in 2006, while it is also much higher than the 11% national average.

However, the city wants to expand this further in order to bring Philadelphia in-line with other major cities and is instituting a number of changes: primarily, all numbers of plastics will now be accepted for curbside pick up, this means everything from milk cartons (no. 1) to mixed plastic items such as vacuum cleaners and telephone receivers (no. 7) will be taken by refuse removal services for recycling.

The development is as significant as the introduction of the ‘single stream’ recycling system, one in which various materials for recycling no longer needed to be separated and were sorted at the recycling plant instead.

These latest steps to make recycling more convenient, and therefore more mainstream, are part of a project that started in 2009 when Philadelphia news media reported that the city council had contracted a company called RecycleBank, which provides residents with coupons and other vouchers in return for recycling.

The city gets a reward as well, for every ton of material that is recycled the city saves $68 on landfill costs, but also receives $51.37 per ton from Waste Management Inc, which is based in Houston, but runs a recycling plant in Philadelphia. According to Streets Commissioner Clarena Tolson, the city saves around $400,000 per month from recycling.

Philadelphia now joins the ranks of a number of other major cities, such as Washington and New York City with more cities expected to expand their recycling programs as the price of commodities such as no. 7 plastics grows and municipalities look for ways to save money in a bad economy.

Not everyone is pleased with the growing popularity of recycling though. Many environmentalists have advocated a hierarchy of priorities that singles out reducing packaging and other forms of waste in the first place, reusing when possible and recycling only as a last resort. This is because of the carbon emissions released and energy used in actually recycling materials such as plastic, which have to be melted down at varying heats depending on their number (no. 1, for instance, melts at a lower heat than no. 7).

Environmentalists worry that mainstreamed recycling facilities will make consumers and manufacturers complacent about how much packaging they use and consume, which will thereby create a new problem in that all the recycling plants in the country will contribute to our carbon footprint in a different way (air-based pollution).

Another issue is a humanitarian one, many plastics, especially the higher-grade ones, are shipped off to Asia for sorting, recycling and re-use, raising questions about whether consumers should be contributing to a market that may employ slave labor at worst or exploited workers at best with minimal to no environmental protections or workplace safety laws.