Taking care of business: municipal recycling programs make progress toward becoming more cost effective.

Money may make the world go around, but it's always been a sticking point for municipal recycling programs. Critics of such programs sometimes paint them in an unflattering light as a burden to taxpayers, while advocates paint a sunnier picture of the long-term environmental benefits outweighing any short-term burdens to municipal pocketbooks.

Many within the recycling industry say that encouraging municipalities to see recycling as a business is a first step toward more financially sound municipal recycling programs.

THINKING BIGGER. Recyclers and processors are well aware of the recent boom in commodity pricing--especially when it comes to scrap metal and fiber. Some cities have capitalized on this development, while others have lagged behind, says Patrick Holland, executive director of the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Solid Waste District.

Peter Grogan of Weyerhaeuser Co., Federal Way, Wash., agrees. "Steel and paper have seen good markets, driven by export demand," Grogan says. "But [many] cities don't have self-sufficient programs" and rarely benefit from booming prices.

"With all due respect to municipal recycling programs, I do not believe most of them keep track of international demand for recyclable commodities," Grogan says. He says with areas like Europe and China modernizing but lacking forests for virgin packaging material, global demand for secondary fiber is "explosive," but many cities continue to remain out of the loop.

"There are a limited number of cities in the country that are really on top of the commodity situation," says Bill Moore of Moore & Associates, an Atlanta-based paper industry consultant.

Some industry insiders say that the day-to-day operations of providing recycling programs block municipalities from fully engaging in the market.

Holland says that many municipalities lose interest in the material once it's collected. "Their focus is really on their curbside--picking up the material," he says. "Their interest ends at the city border."

Victor Horton of the Maine Resource Recovery Association in Bangor, Maine, agrees. "A comment we still hear is that the stuff is trash," he says. "And movement of material can be a harrowing affair."

Personnel issues are another problem, according to Moore. He says that when things get tight financially, one of the first moves a city makes is to cut the recycling coordinator's position to save costs. "A lot of those people are gone now," he says. "And that's the person who's the flag waver, who organizes and promotes."

Furthermore, when it comes to recyclable commodities, recyclers and processors often see the material in a very different light from the municipal officials who oversee its collection. "The approach of most municipalities is [that] recycling is another way of disposing of material," says Holland. "Whether it goes to a landfill or a recycling facility is not the main concern, so they don't follow the commodity pricing as closely."

Moore agrees and says that the most successful municipal programs look at their material recovery facilities (MRFs) as manufacturing facilities. But a problematic attitude persists in many cities, which view MRFs as glorified landfills and recyclables as garbage, Moore says. "People still think of it as throwing it away--not making an actual marketable product," he says.

INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. While financial troubles still follow many programs, some argue that municipal recycling has come a long way and that negative attitudes about the costs to taxpayers aren't as prevalent as they once were.

"The public wants this service," says Holland. "Granted, some communities are more interested in recycling than others."

Herb Northrop, co-owner of Philadelphia's Blue Mountain Recycling, says he's seen the industry evolve and make a great deal of positive progress during his 25 years in the business. "Like any industry, the longer you're in it, the better you get at it," he says. "Part of that is learning how to make it more cost effective."

The collection component is one of the biggest costs, and Northrop says many municipal programs have successfully trimmed their costs.

Northrop and others agree that drop-off programs, single-stream collection and improved sorting technology have all helped city-run recycling programs better their bottom lines.

Lisa Skumatz of Skumatz Economic Research in Superior, Colo., says these elements stem from an overall maturing of the recycling industry. "Cities are refining the ways they collect recycling," she says. "There's been a lot of information from other communities."

Scaling back curbside collection--from once a week to every other week, for instance--or eliminating curbside in favor of drop-off programs have helped other municipalities trim their collection costs, says Holland.

In Cleveland and Euclid, Ohio, Holland says drop-off programs have also helped increase participation because they are more customer-oriented. "The more convenient it is for citizens, the more they participate," he says. "[With drop-off] they can do it when they want, on their schedule, not just every Wednesday when the truck comes.

Holland also says the drop-off programs give people who might have been excluded from curbside collection a chance to participate, which helps increase tonnage thus lowering the cost per ton. He uses Euclid as an example, where he says some tonnage has been lost from single-family homes, but the city has seen a dramatic increase in material from apartment complexes.

With today's skyrocketing fuel costs, transportation cost savings a municipality achieves by using drop-off centers also make a big difference, Holland adds.

SINGLE-STREAM SAVINGS. Single-stream collection is catching on in many cities as a way to keep collection costs down. "It's made collection cheaper and it's improving the viability of curbside," says Skumatz.

While improved sorting technology has helped the cause of single-stream collection, many of those on the consuming end of recycling are still not completely sold.

"Sorting has created a better financial dynamic, but by no means have we reached perfection," says Grogan, who says his facilities still see a lot of glass mixed in with the paper they receive from single-stream programs.

He uses a Weyerhaeuser mill in Longview, Wash., as an example--saying that it collected 700 tons of old newspapers (ONP) per day from dual- and multiple-stream programs a few years ago. During that time, the mill would receive seven tons of contamination per day. Now that 42 percent of the material comes from single-stream programs, Grogan says that mill reports 35 tons of contamination per day.

Grogan says that also gives cities a false sense of recycling success. Municipal programs think they are achieving impressive diversion rates, but they don't factor in the material that processors and consumers end up landfilling because of contamination, he says.

Mike Ursu, supervisor of waste diversion operations for the Region of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, is also skeptical of single stream's effect on savings. He says the increased labor for pre- and post-sorting lines as well as the capital investment in improved equipment tends to "negate any savings at the curb."

While some remain negative on the controversial subject of single-stream recycling, others, like Horton, have a more optimistic outlook as sorting technology continues to improve. "Quality issues still have to be ironed out, but they are making headway," he says.

Northrop says the advent of single-stream programs is directly connected to improved sorting technology and part of the industry's constant evolution. "When we all got started, you had commodities source separated at the curb. Next was commingled for bottles and cans, next is single stream, where it's all placed in one container--it's a direct result of the technology available to separate the material," he says.

PUBLIC DEMAND. Moore points out that while many municipal recycling programs run into financial difficulty, "at the end of the day, very few programs have shut down."

Every municipality is different. While some have suffered from misconceptions and negative attitudes about recycling, others have taken advantage of new developments in sorting technology and single-stream collection to keep their programs more cost effective. Industry insiders seem to agree that cities that want recycling find a way to make it work financially.

"There are still vocal folks, common everyday people who want recycling and they're willing to pay more," Moore says.

The author is assistant editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at [e-mail].

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