Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Car Pushed Into Anacostia River By Train
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Devendra Banhart @ 9:30 Club
Saturday Thanks Don't End At Thanksgiving Photo: November 28, 2009
...and it has to do with trash.
Today the New York Times reports that Houston is among the least recycling-friendly cities in the country, trashing all but 2.6 percent of its refuse. That may not seem too bad when lined up against San Antonio (4 percent) or Detroit (10 percent), but it's terrible when you consider that the national average is 32 percent, and that Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco each handily exceed 50 percent.
But how about Washington? Meh -- we're tied with Phoenix, with 22 percent of trash recycled. (FYI - The article didn't include Washington's tally. For that, I had to register to get the full survey from WasteNews, a trade publication on trash. And they now have my contact info. Awesome.) Our neighbor to the north, Baltimore, comes in with a very respectable 42 percent, while just a little farther up I-95, Philadelphia hits 38 percent. Boston sucks a little more than we do, though, just getting to 15 percent, while New York gets 34 percent.
So why isn't the District better at recycling? Like Houston, part of it might have to do with the troubles that many residents have had in getting recycling bins (we've heard horror stories; do you have any to share?). Or it might be more serious -- the city has just never really pushed to be good at it. According to one article on NowPublic, plenty of residents have complained about their recycling just getting mixed in with the trash.
We can't let this stand, if only for civic pride. It'll be a dark day in a garbage-filled hell before Baltimore and Philadelphia can tell us how to deal with refuse.
Photo by Terecico
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
What the. Are those beers full?
Um...
Those bottles are full of beer.
What moron is throwing those out?
My question exactly. Is there anything else comment worthy about this story?
Si. Cerveza.
It's Heineken, I'd throw them out full too.
At my office we are verv big on recycling, as most offices are downtown...however, I have been here late enough to witness the trash collectors mixing in the recyled paper with the normal trash. Not sure what happens to the bottles, cans, etc. That being said it probably would bring our 22% down to around 8% if that goes on at all offices.
Montgomery County recycled 43.2% in the 12 months ending June 30, 2007. The rate was 31.3% for Arlington in 2003. Both of these figures are before expanded recycling of plastic containers. Montgomery currently accepts all types of plastic for recycling, and Arlington expects to accept all plastic containers with recycling numbers 1-7 in the near future.
In the meantime, we in the District have to use the subjective "narrow neck" description to determine if a plastic is recyclable then exclude enigmatic items like "Dell and Grocery Containers."
part of it is the byzantine way that different buildings have to deal with recycling. it seems to me that the whole "apartments rule" that forces buildings with more than 4 separate units to get their own garbage service cuts down on recycling participation.
there are a lot of small apartment buildings, or even row houses that have been divided into 4 apartments, that don't recycle (at least they clearly only have trash cans outside, and no recycling cans). maybe the city should put some focus there to get those places to recycle their waste; that might get our numbers up closer to philly/bawlmer range.
For the first 6 months I lived at my apartment, all the recycling was dumped into the trash. People just used the recycle bins as extra trash cans. Now, new management is actually trying to recycle, but everyone still throws their trash in the recycle bins. It's hard to get people to change their ways.
Waste News? I believe that is one of the more obscure trade pubs owned by Crain's Communications, which has some pretty big-name titles (AdAge, Automotive News, Crains New York Business) and some more obscure ones like the European Rubber Journal, Plastics News and my favorite, Coin-Op, for the coin-operated laundry industry. (I interned for a Crain's business pub many moons ago ...)
For the record, I havea hunch that a "Dell Container" is supposed to be a "Deli" container, but I am still not sure what "Grocery Container" is.
Bottle bill! Bottle bill!
I'm all for more and better recycling! What about compost? Portland, Oregon has a bin for trash, another for recycling, and now one for compost!
it's all these things that make you realize, while the district might be reliably democratic when it comes to elections, we're far from being as progressive as we could be.
i don't get the philly-hatin'. i can't speak for baltimore, but in my view philly does just about everything better than this place. that includes being interesting and fun. i'll admit that they probably do a better job at creating a lot of trash too.
amen, IMGoph
jpk: speaking of philly vs. dc trash-wise...we were driving up to a wedding north of new york last weekend, and i wanted to drive through philly to check out the neighborhood where my dad grew up. driving along kensington and frankford aves. in NE philly, the amount of trash on the street (under the el there) was striking.
i always thought that h street ne in DC was dirty, but man, it doesn't hold a candle to what i saw in philly.
i love philly though. driving along baltimore pike in west philly i saw some beautiful neighborhoods.
I interned for a Crain's business pub many moons ago, and now I am an unpaid blogger.
It's all about convenience. Some buildings provide their residents with easy ways to recycle. In my building, it's super easy. All recycling goes into the blue bin in the trash room of each floor and trash goes down the chute. Very simple.
However, in my friend's building, trash can go down the chute but you have to take any recycling to the basement (accessible only via the stairs) and separate it out into the bins. I'm honestly surprised anyone recycles in that building at all.
10 bucks says if you live in an apartment building with between, say, 4 and 10 units, your "recycling" is actually getting tossed in with the garbage by the (private) garbage collection men. I have personally witnessed this happening at two different apartment buildings. Even in the rare instance that it's actually kept separate, and the garbage men do in fact bring it to a recycling center, all the non-recyclable stuff you threw in there (plastic wrappers, paper towels, lids, food-encrusted containers) is contaminating everything else and will turn the whole lot into garbage anyway.
CLW,
LA does the same too: Blue for general recycling, green for yard wast and black for regular waste. Time for some mandates!
>And they now have my contact info. Awesome.
Why did you give them your real information? Bizarre. Mailinator.com is a great system to use for email addresses. And any address on J Street NW in DC will work just fine most of the time.
I think part of the problem is that the Office of Recycling has left most of Anacostia off of their recycling map
I'm all for more and better recycling! What about compost? Portland, Oregon has a bin for trash, another for recycling, and now one for compost!
I think this is pretty common in Europe. I know the town in Austria where my brother lives has a compost bin.
My office has had a couple of inspections by the DC recycling police since spring. I guess a new initiative? They just announced a few months ago they'd be coming by from time to time to make sure offices are recycling as required.
volite: all of anacostia is not on that map.
regardless, just because an area isn't colored in there doesn't mean they don't have recycling pick-up. that's just the areas that have trash pick-up twice a week, letting them know which of their two trash days they should leave the recycling out on.
bloomingdale isn't colored in there, because we only get trash pick-up once a week, but we most certainly get recycling pick-up as well. i just wheeled the carts out to the street 5 minutes ago.
Let's see, I live in Shaw/Truxton Circle area of DC and I see that any efforts I make to recycle are thwarted by DC by 1) emptying the recycle bin in to the "regular trash" trash truck or 2) even through the recycling can are placed out weekly as instructed by my area, they are sporadically picked up and emptied. So I'm left dragging back in a full blue recycling can week after week until finally they decide to empty it. (We have once a week supercan trash pickup which is supposed to include recycle pickup as well).
We either have recycling in DC or we don't ... but again, that can be said about a lot of city services in DC. Right JACK?
Many of us that have lived here for a while know why residents don't recycle. It's because the recycling collection is terrible.
Quite often you could go entire months without reliable pickup. This was especially bad when we had the little bins. People would put out their recycle, the recycle guys wouldn't come, and the paper stuff ended up just blowing down the street.
After years of this many longtime residents just gave up.
It seems to be better now, but I still see entire blocks missed by the recycle teams.
It's not surprising how well California fared in the survey, considering the can and bottle premiums there, which lead to the ever popular money-making strategy of collecting recyclables out of the trash.
@IMGoph: Huh? I said 'Most of anacostia is off the map' in my comment. I guess I'm just curious if the areas they've drawn are the only "Twice-weekly" recycling pickups in DC. Any idea?
After looking at DPR's Office of Recycling FY2004 report, the cost of recycling program($4.3 Million) far outweighs the returns (revenues of a little under $830,000). I'm wondering what's the incentive for the collectors to keep the stuff separate?
Report can be seen at this page
Just because the trash and recycles are mixed at your location doesn't mean it's all going to the landfill/incinerator. Post-collection sorting/segregation can occur. But as unknown user states, this does contaminate some of the recyclables (notably paper).
My household easily exceeds 70% of all trash being recycled. Of course, that could be because at least 70% of what is consumed is alcoholic.
volite: hey there, sorry, it was late last night when i made that comment.
i meant to highlight the all in my comment. as in, it's not just that some of anacostia is not on that map, all of anacostia is not on that map. what they do show east of the river on that map is parts of fairlawn, twining, and randle highlands. i just assumed that you were lumping everything east of the river into "anacostia".
i believe that those colored areas are the only twice-weekly pickup areas in the city, due to the fact that they are the most densely-populated areas and the tend to have smaller trash containers due to space constraints.