doodledee

In the week leading up to Earth Day this year, the Strib ran a multi-day/multi-part story that focused on All Things Recycling. I'm pretty sure it started on a Sunday, because I remember reading the first (of 5?) articles in the series at the dining room table while stuffing down a bowl of Honeycomb and I only do that on weekends. I also remember thinking that I wasn't going to waste my time reading the rest of the series because - duh - articles about recycling are boring.

At least I thought they were boring until I accidentally read the 'follow-up' article in the paper last Saturday. That one was downright interesting and, dare I say, even a little... scandalous?

The follow-up was a Q&A type thing that answered a bunch of questions readers had submitted over the course of the series. They was mostly dumb questions ("What happens to tuna cans collected for recycling?" Uhh, they get recycled?) but there were a couple of interesting ones. This one in particular caught my eye:

Q: You wrote that Anchor Glass factory in Shakopee is getting half as much recycled glass now than it did just a few years ago because recycling companies are sending glass to landfills. How can this be? Isn't there a law that prevents recyclable materials from going to landfills?

A: The glass ends up at landfills because it's broken and colors are mixed, a form the factory cannot use. For glass recycling, glass must be separated by color: clear, brown and green or blue. It doesn't matter if it's broken. Under state law, material picked up for recycling cannot go to a landfill, except if there's no market for it.

Recently, Waste Management Recycle America Alliance introduced a new form of collecting recycling in the state and it results in significant amounts of mixed broken glass. There is no market for that, so Waste Management, and other recycling companies with broken mixed glass, can put it in their landfills.

An optical scanner can sort broken mixed glass back into a recyclable form, but there are no optical scanners in Minnesota. The nearest one is in Chicago.

Allow me to summarize. This will undoubtedly be longer than the answer above, so hold on.

There are areas of the Twin Cities where residents can just dump all their recyclables into a big ass 'recycling only' garbage can that the recycling company (Waste Management) provides for them. This system is known as 'single sort' because it only requires people to bulk sort the stuff that's recyclable from the stuff that isn't. Single sort differs from the other common 'two sort' system - which requires residents to separate paper products from glass and metal - and the old school 'multi sort' system that required a different bag for each color of glass and flavor of soup can.

People who live in the single sort world obviously love it because they don't have to sort much. But you know who loves it more? Garbage companies. And you know why? Because their garbage trucks are outfitted with mechanical arms designed to pick up and dump the big ass rolling recycling cans. Bigger, faster, stronger, victory.

Now here's the scandal part. When you use a robot arm to violently dump a bunch of glass bottles and jars into the back of a garbage truck you're most likely gonna end up with a bunch of broken glass. And unfortunately the machines that can sort broken glass are a) very expensive to build and maintain and b) in Chicago.

Oh crap, what's the garbage company supposed to do with all that broken, mixed color glass?

Landfill it, duh. See, under Minnesota law, the garbage companies are free to landfill anything they can't find a buyer for. And seeing as nobody is really interested in buying a bunch of unsorted broken glass, it's perfectly legal for the garbage company to bury it in the ground EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE THE ONES WHO BROKE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. That, my friends, is a what we in the business like to call a 'loophole'.

Here in Caketown, we use the 'two sort' system. (Our city recycling contract is with BFI, not Waste Management.) I wrote to the Edina Recycling Boss and asked her if our glass ends up in landfills, too. Here's what she said:

[T]he two sort system is more manual labor/hand dumped into the recycling truck so there is less breakage... Last year we collected over 5,000 tons of paper and rigids that were recycled. The total amount that was sorted as not recyclable was just a little over 1%.

(I guess I have no idea how much better the 1% number is, but it sounds good, so kudos for us.)

In summary, if you're still reading this and you live in a 'single sort' town, maybe it's time you did some bitchin' to you city and/or garbage company. Just 'cause it's easy and cheap for them doesn't mean it's right.

The recycling stream: An update [strib]
Recycling Feature Home Page [strib]
Green Guardian [gg] - Guide for disposing of crazy stuff in the Twin Cities
Edina Recycling [edina] - Solvei rocks!