Sacramento Cracks Down on Trash-Laden Recycling Bins

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage):  Week after week, Sacramento-area residents use their recycling bins as trash cans.

Shoes, batteries, carpet scraps, briquettes, baby strollers – even a whole toilet – have been tossed into the recycling stream.Fed up with trash-laden recycling batches, the government is cracking down – but not the one you might expect.

The Chinese government, which receives the bulk of West Coast recyclables, began an aggressive campaign last summer to reject shipments with even a modest amount of garbage. The crackdown and a broader market decline means that recycling collection will swing from a $1.2 million money-maker for Sacramento County to a $1.1 million cost.

The problem isn’t the cans and bottles with a redemption value, but various forms of paper.
“Every jurisdiction in the state of California is having a problem with mixed waste paper. We used to just stuff it into a shipping container and ship it to China,” said Mark Murray, CEO of Californians Against Waste. “China has closed the door on that.”In response to China’s changes, local officials are planning crackdowns of their own. Both the county and city of Sacramento are considering plans to have staff flag errant recycling habits and possibly penalize those who sully their recycling bins with trash.

Before that, however, they plan to educate residents on the right way to recycle. “Most people want to recycle the right way,” said Doug Sloan, Sacramento County’s director of waste management and recycling.

After an education campaign, the county needs to find a way to ensure residents are following through.

“Identifying it by house is not an easy thing,” Sloan said. “Somehow it has to be part of the program.”

He said a recycling driver can watch video of each load as it is dumped into the truck. Alternatively, staff could go from bin to bin ahead of the collection truck.

The goal is to reduce the county’s contamination rate from 25 percent to 10 percent, Sloan said.
In the city of Sacramento, which operates its own recycling collection, the contamination rate is 18 percent, said city spokeswoman Erin Treadwell. But Sacramento hasn’t set a specific reduction goal yet.

Courtesy: https://wasteadvantage.com