Durham wants to get more recyclables out of its trash

DURHAM -- Durham residents need to recycle more — much more — to help the city both go green and save green, city leaders said this week.

The city must haul all its non-recyclable garbage to a landfill in Virginia. High fuel prices add to the incentive to reuse as much refuse locally as possible, said council member Diane Catotti.

About 20 percent of the city's waste stream is recycled, about 13,000 tons a year.

That's far short of the ultimate goal of higher than 40 percent.

"We need to be doing more," Catotti said.

But more of what?

Staff and politicos agree that a public campaign is needed to, as Catotti put it, "educate and motivate our citizens."

Yet that doesn't address some of the logistical difficulties hampering recycling efforts.

A case in point was raised at Thursday's City Council work session. Resident Josie McNeil told the council that most of the city's parks don't provide recycling bins.

The reason, said Solid Waste Director Donald Long, is twofold.

"One, unattended recycling bins tend to become garbage cans very quickly," he said, noting that half-eaten sandwiches and other perishable goods often are found in the recycling bins that have been placed at a few parks.

"And it is a manpower issue. We aren't staffed to either attend them or empty them."

The city, in fact, doesn't employ a single person to collect recyclables. Instead, it pays Tidewater Fiber Corp. about $2 million a year to collect recyclables from the curbside and process them.

The company said it would be inefficient to have its haulers collect recyclables from all city parks, particularly when the bins often are filthy once collection time comes around.

McNeil took it upon herself to "separate the hot dog buns from the Pepsi cans" in the recycling bins at West Point Park, where she is a volunteer. Once the bin is full, she said, she calls someone at solid waste, and he promptly collects it and hands it off to Tidewater processors.

That procedure could be extended to the rest of the city parks as well as to any other city-run facility, Long said, though it's unclear how much that would cost.

Long said he has considered switching to direct city collection of recyclables to gain more control over what is collected.

Doing so, however, would require six to nine trucks at $100,000 to $150,000 a pop and the hiring of a dozen or more new employees. Even then, the city still would have to have to pay a company like Tidewater to process the waste.

It's something Catotti said the city should consider.

In the end, though, the most important factor will be residents' willingness to participate in the recycling program.

The city has to make it more convenient for that to happen, Catotti said.

Long hopes a pilot program starting in late September or early October will help that cause.

About 3,000 households will receive 95-gallon roll-out carts instead of the 18-gallon bins that have to be carried to the curb.

He's hoping that will make it easier for people to recycle more material and more often.