NERC in the News
Does One Container Equal More Recycling?
Utica (New York) Observer-Dispatch; August 9, 2011
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By Bryon Ackerman
UTICA — Utica resident Robert Brockway has noticed himself recycling more in the past month.
Why? Because Brockway, 82, said it’s become easier since the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority began on July 5 to allow for all accepted recyclables to be placed in the same container for pickup.
“You don’t have to guess,” Brockway said. “You put it all in one.”
The authority started the single-stream recycling system just more than a month ago as part of a $10 million process that will include renovating the Leland Avenue facility in Utica to handle sorting the recyclables and advertising information about the change.
No statistics are available yet to show whether the RecycleOne program has increased recycling efforts in Oneida and Herkimer counties, but the authority is expecting a 10 to 15 percent jump in recycling.
Single-stream recycling has grown increasingly common and has now become the norm, state and regional recycling experts said.
There is some disagreement about whether it is the best way to go, but Meg Morris, an at-large board member for the New York State Association for Reduction, Reuse & Recycling, thinks it is.
The single-stream process increases recycling, and that’s the most important thing, said Morris, who also is chairwoman of the Federation of New York Solid Waste Associations.
“If they don’t have to work as hard, people are more likely to recycle,” Morris said.
Mark Naef, another at-large member of the New York State Association for Reduction, Reuse & Recycling and the vice president of GreeningUSA, said his personal opinion is that separating recyclables is a better method.
Naef said single-stream made more sense in states such as Texas and Arizona where people were reluctant to recycle, but he doesn’t think the process leads to more recycling in New York state.
“It will make it more convenient for people who already recycle,” he said.
Mary Ann Remolador, assistant director of the Northeast Recycling Council, said single-stream recycling is common throughout the Northeast because it offers the opportunity to save money and does bump up the amount of material recycled.
“It gets more people to recycle more because it takes all the guess work out of it,” Remolador said. “It is effective.”
‘Easy for us’
One concern coming into the change locally was whether people would follow the new directions not to put the recyclables in plastic bags, said Jamie Tuttle, the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority school recycling coordinator.
But the recyclables coming in are getting cleaner every day with fewer plastic bags and less contamination, Tuttle said.
As part of the education process, waste haulers have been leaving behind recyclables in plastic bags and placing black and red stickers on the bags saying, “Oops, no bags,” Tuttle said.
Private haulers Left-Over Express and Doug Simchik Trash Hauling still require recyclables to be placed in plastic bags, and the haulers then empty the bags when making drop offs at the authority’s recycling center, Tuttle said.
Joan Failing, of Schuyler, said she likes the new method because she likes being able to put everything in one container.
“It’s really easy for us,” she said.
