A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
In the latest Resource Recycling newsletter, two items caught my eye. Since the first mentioned Texas among three other states and the second mentioned a small city in Texas (Temple), I knew I had material for this column. The first titled “How pro
The first titled “How programs in NY, Texas, and Colorado are handling COVID-19,” started with the statement, “Three recycling program leaders from across the U.S. said that education and outreach efforts have seen budget cuts due to the pandemic..”
It continued, “Leaders from three municipal recycling programs of varying size, including the largest city in the U.S., say they are grappling with budget issues and making alterations to collection service as the coronavirus pandemic continues.”
The cities involved in this article are New York City; our Austin, Texas; and Fort Collins, Colorado. During a panel discussion during a conference, all three noticed more personal protective equipment (PPE) ending up as contamination in the recycling stream, but no increase of other contamination.
All three cities experienced a decrease in recycled material from the commercial area but an increase in the residential area. Even with the different size of these cities, all three are having budget problems due to the virus. And unfortunately, they all expect these problems to continue for some time.
As we well know from the news, New York City, with about 8.3 million people, was quickly the epicenter of the virus in the U.S. early in the year. Their waste collection department was not spared. It had over 600 cases and multiple deaths within its workforce. With each new positive case in any of its facilities, it would be shut down and cleaned extensively.
The cost of this plus other factors required parts of many programs to be reduced or even shut down. For example, the city started an experimental organics collection program in 2013. It was so well liked that within five years, it grew to cover over a third of the city. However due to the virus-caused budget cuts, it had to be temporarily suspended.
The city also had to suspend popular special waste drop-off events. The curbside composting program also had to be stopped for the time being. Enough about our largest city (which also has a lot of politics in the news).
The article then went to Fort Collins. There, with about 170,000 residents, the recycling impacts from virus came in phases. As the virus started to spread across the nation, the small city wanted to do what was necessary, but not have too strong a response.
As part of this, the city delayed its yard trimmings collection effort by over two months. It also delayed its startup of a multi-family recycling mandate. During this period of the virus, it is having to concentrate on the normal waste and recycling activities, plus ensure new customers can be served.
(Please Note: we are now already at the length we try to make these columns and haven’t even touched what was in the article about the little city just to the north of us. We will cover what was said about the effects of the virus on Austin’s program in next week’s column.)
Till then, praying you are happy, safe, and virus-free. (Did you know that the suggested 20-seconds of hand-washing is about the time it takes to silently say the Lord’s Prayer? And you can always dedicate it to His ending the virus soon.)
