Published: June 20, 2009 10:07 pm      

A Word About Recycling - June 21, 2009

An article in the latest Recycling Today e-newsletter, appropriately titled, “Trash to Treasure” (as all recyclable waste should be) caught our eye even though it concerns another state.

“The city of San Jose, Calif., has long enjoyed a reputation as a recycling leader. The city’s landfill diversion rate of 62 percent is among the highest in the nation.

However, with the city’s goal of achieving zero waste by 2022, it was clear to city officials that more would need to be done in pursuit of this goal.”

(Zero waste in a little over 12 years is a pretty challenging goal!)

Towards this goal, the city has contracted a privately owned company called GreenWaste Recovery which “...specializes in collecting and processing residential and commercial trash, yard trimmings, curbside recyclables, food waste and construction and demolition debris.”

We find “The company’s dual-line recovery facility (MRF), which has been in operation since May of 2008, is recovering nearly 80 percent of recyclables from the city’s MSW and efficiently processing single-stream material using the same system, according to GreenWaste Recovery and the city of San Jose.”

To process the 400 to 450 tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) per day from the city and an additional 140 to 150 tons per day from the county, the company “... relies heavily on a patented automated sorting process developed by BHS that incorporates screening, air systems and optical sorting technology.

“In contrast, many dirty MRFs achieve recovery rates of 15 percent to 25 percent, including organics, and are heavily reliant on manual pickers.”

(We believe it won’t be long before other larger cities will also use an automated sorting process for MSW.)

Switching subjects, we’ve written how some states and/or cities are thinking of banning the thin plastic bags used by grocery stores, hardware stores, retail stores, etc.

Now we find that such bags not only cause problems (and eyesores) when they get scattered on land, but also in the oceans (where too much garbage is still being illegally dumped).

“A report released by the United Nation’s Environment Programme and Ocean Conservancy has found that significant steps need to be taken to reduce the problem with marine litter. The report is the first taken by the UN to take stock of the marine litter situation in the 12 major regional seas around the world.”

The article continued, “Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "Marine litter is symptomatic of a wider malaise: namely the wasteful use and persistent poor management of natural resources.

“The plastic bags, bottles and other debris piling up in the oceans and seas could be dramatically reduced by improved waste reduction, waste management and recycling initiatives".

He really expresses his feelings concerning such plastic bags, “Some of the litter, like thin film single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased-out rapidly everywhere-there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere.”

(Zero justification, anymore, anywhere is pretty strong... )

Now for our monthly report on how many pounds our local citizens (many of you) are recycling at the Green Guy Recycling Services drop-off site. These figures are for last month (May):

Cardboard = 221,630 pounds

Metals = 86,249 pounds

Paper = 76,140 pounds

Glass = 30,256 pounds

Plastic = 2,108 pounds

Other items recycled were 1,430 gallons of used oil and approximately 400 used oil filters.

A big Thank you for those of you who use this site for recycling. (And also to those of you who pay the suggested donations when dropping off used tires, refrigerator/freezers, air conditioners, etc. It helps keep him in business.)

Till next week, do have a great one...



Gloria and Ollie are local citizens concerned with the environment and helping others. Ollie is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and they both received higher education at TxState University. For questions or comments, call 353-7432 or e-mail omaier@TxState.edu