Pensacola, FL’s Recycling Reboot Tops First-Month Goal

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): Pensacola’s rebooted curbside recycling program has cleared its first bar, Mayor D.C. Reeves said, with sign‑ups running ahead of the city’s initial goal. “We’re now up to 2,700 households, which is about 13% of our current sanitation,” Reeves said at his weekly news conference. “We were aiming for 10% in the first month. So we were actually surpassing what we expected we were going to have.”

The city relaunched curbside recycling this summer as an opt‑in service with an emphasis on cleaner loads and resident education. Early participation is a promising sign, but the real test will be contamination — non‑recyclable material in the cart that can cause entire loads to be rejected. Reeves said the city is still tallying that statistic.

“I don’t have the full cumulative clean contaminated percentages,” he said, but I have the weight. We’re at 42,000 pounds of clean recyclables so far, cumulatively.”

Courtesy: www.wasteadvantagemag.com