Seattle’s Recycling Success Is Being Measured in Scraps

[Bond James Bond]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/us/10recycle.html

October 10, 2007
Seattle’s Recycling Success Is Being Measured in Scraps
By J. MICHAEL KENNEDY

EVERETT, Wash. — Out here next to Steamboat Slough and the lumber mill, piles of garbage from Seattle are lined up in neat rows and blanketed with a fabric similar to that used in high-end Gore-Tex clothing.

What goes in as yard waste and food scraps will emerge two months later as a mountain of loamy compost sold by the bag at garden centers throughout the Pacific Northwest by Cedar Grove Composting. In the process, the waste is ground up, piled up, aerated, dried and sifted. The space-age fabric covering the piles allows air to enter but keeps pungent odors from wafting over the countryside.

“This is the cool side of trash,” Cedar Grove’s founder, Steve Banchero, said of the process, which is on recycling’s cutting edge.

The company, the major composter in this area, will soon have much more trash coming its way because Seattle is making food waste yet another mandatory recycling ingredient in its already long list.

“The food-waste issue is the new frontier for recycling advocates,” said Kate Krebs, the executive director of the National Recycling Coalition. “It’s the next big chunk.”

Seattle now recycles 44 percent of its trash, compared with the national average of around 30 percent, which makes it a major player in big-city waste recovery. Its goal, city waste management officials said, is to reach 60 percent by 2012 and 72 percent by 2025.

In many other parts of the country, recycling is in the doldrums — and in some cases backsliding — despite the sounding of environmental alarms about global warming and shrinking resources. And it is a far cry from recycling’s heyday, after the nation was jarred into action in 1987 by images of a barge carrying garbage from Long Island being towed up and down the East Coast in search of a place to unload. Six months later, its cargo was returned to New York and burned in a Brooklyn incinerator.

The wandering barge had a profound effect on the American psyche, and within three years most states had passed laws requiring some kind of recycling. But recycling victories are now gauged in much smaller increments. In Seattle’s case, the latest success is measured in scraps.

As the law now stands in Seattle, residents of single family houses are allowed to mix food scraps with yard waste, which is then shipped off to be composted. Recycling of food scraps will become mandatory in 2009.

The new law may add yet another container for curbside pickup, which already includes receptacles for nonrecyclable trash, yard waste, glass and other recyclables. In Seattle, many residents take pride that their weekly nonrecyclable output fits in a container no larger than the average countertop microwave.

But like other cities, Seattle also found itself in a recycling skid a few years back, losing ground to apathy despite being a pacesetter in the boom years of the late ’80s.

“We hit a cardboard ceiling,” said Tim Croll of the Seattle Public Utilities.

The city’s response was to ban paper and cardboard from nonrecyclable garbage — with enforcement penalties — followed by allowing food scraps to be mingled with yard waste.

Still, Seattle’s progress on the home front addresses only part of the challenge of use and reuse. Commercial recycling is in its infancy, though programs have been going for some time — and with considerable success — in places like the San Francisco Bay Area.

The larger picture is that the West Coast is a recycling bellwether, given the emphasis placed on it in Washington, Oregon and California. That includes legislation in California that requires 50 percent of waste statewide to be recycled.

“People are just a little greener on the West Coast,” Mr. Croll said.

But there is a more practical reason for recycling’s success in the West. Seattle and the rest of the West Coast have Pacific Rim ports at their disposal, and freighters plying routes to Asia have found a profitable cargo in recycled paper, particularly for the Chinese market. Waste paper is now commanding about $90 a ton throughout the United States, which makes it possible to turn a profit by loading it onto ships instead of dumping it into landfills.

Not to sell it “would be like burying money,” said Chaz Miller of the Environmental Industry Associations, which represents the private waste service industry. Because of that, collecting paper for recycling is at an all-time high.

One of the few publications that tries to quantify recycling is BioCycle Magazine, which works in conjunction with the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University. It puts the West at the forefront of the country, with 38 percent of its waste being reused. By comparison, the neighboring Rocky Mountain region recycles only 14 percent of its trash, with almost all the rest going into landfills.

Jerry Powell, who publishes Resource Recycling magazine, based in Portland, Ore., and is considered one of the nation’s experts on the subject, is bullish on the industry’s prospects.

“This decade is the best for recycling markets ever,” Mr. Powell said. “If you can’t make money recycling, you should go elsewhere.”

By his count, more recycling legislation was passed in 2006 than in any year of the previous 10. Even the current downturn in recycling in many places has to be kept in perspective, he said, considering that today, recycling is a part of almost everyone’s life.

“We’re a part of the fabric of the country,” he said. “What used to be done by a guy who wore Birkenstocks and drove a Volvo is now being done by someone who drives a Ford 250 with a gun rack. It’s the largest environmental concern we’ve ever known.”

Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle said he was chagrined when the numbers began to fall in his city. Now he thinks Seattle has reached a point where it can serve as a model of how to recoup from a stumble.

“One thing we can offer is an example of how to tackle this,” Mr. Nickels said.

[Black Box]

I actually took a tour of this facility two years ago. It was very neatly organized and efficient. The smell was only a bit off putting, but it beats a landfill.

[sequoias]

I'm not surprised that west coast is greener than rest of the nation because some of the newcomers from east coast never seen that many stuff is recycable. I'm glad theye working hard to make more stuff recycable in the future as well as right now.

[Bond James Bond]

Waste paper is now commanding about $90 a ton throughout the United States, which makes it possible to turn a profit by loading it onto ships instead of dumping it into landfills.

Damn, I didn't know it had become so valuable. Maybe I should start recycling more of my paper instead of just my newspaper.

[mhays]

Recycling is good, but the people who came up with the "reduce, reuse, recycle" slogan considered recycling the least-important part of that equation. And they're right: it's best to "reduce" first, and then reuse. Recycling is a last resort.

"Reducing" is a big part of why I don't have a car, live in a moderate-sized condo and not a house, read newspapers online, keep furniture permanently, etc. It's not an obsession, more like an 80% rule I barely think about. Actually, if you live an urban lifestyle you get to the 75% point automatically. (all numbers for conversation purposes only!)

[sequoias]

Well, I would love to live in downtown Seattle but the apartment rents are out of my range and I won't need to own a car and shop locally and ride bus around if I really need to. I will have to find a job in downtown area, too. It's a good way to get the most out of "reducing".

[CrazyAboutCities]

I recycle all the time. I don't drive or have car so I walk or ride the bus. I also replaced all bulbs with efficient ones.