A curbed appetite: municipal officials need continuing assurances that curbside recycling programs make fiscal sense

Recycling Today, Oct, 2003 by Brian Taylor

The accounting scandals that exposed the profits of companies such as Enron and Worldcom as being dubiously calculated shows that creativity and mathematics can indeed go hand-in-hand.

Weilding a calculator with a pre-determined goal in mind can result in the "fuzzy math" decried by George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential debates. Such a technique can also provide ammunition for two different sides of an argument, as often happens when curbside recycling is the subject of a debate.

Ultimately, city and county officials must determine if recycling programs are in the interests of taxpayers, and calculating the short-term and long-term fiscal effects of recycling is an important part of that process.

AN OPEN DEBATE. A packed room of attendees at the 2001 WasteExpo in Chicago enjoyed an event billed as, "The Great Debate: Is Recycling Garbage?" The debate featured writer John Tierney, whose New York Times Magazine article "Recycling is Garbage" in 1996 elicited more reader responses than any previous piece in the magazine.

Tierney, who questions the fiscal wisdom of tax-supported recycling programs, debated environmentalist Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resource Defense Council, New York.

The crux of Tierney's argument was that recycling "makes sense for some materials at some times, but not [for] household waste." Support for curbside programs arose based on two mistaken assumptions, he said: that we are running out of commodities and that landfill space is scarce.

Tierney called copper "more expendable than ever" and said energy, despite recent price rises, is still "cheaper than at any time in history." The labor-intensive collection and processing of recyclables is the greater waste, according to Tierney, who remarked, "the only resource that gets scarcer and more expensive is human labor or time."

Hershkowitz countered that while mineral resources have not depleted as quickly as once projected, they are still finite. "A criticism of government is that it fails to pay attention to the long term. Now we are, and we're being criticized."

The environmentalist also pointed to the hidden government support the timber and mining industries receive from the federal government as opposed to the shifting and uneven support offered to recycling.

During the rebuttal stages of the debate, Tierney referred again to the labor-intensive nature of recycling. "All of this hand sorting ... is where the waste is," he remarked.

A recycling advocate would probably hope that Tierney was able to walk the floor of WasteExpo to see the displays of mechanical screening, sorting and separating companies offering equipment to address the same issue.

REGIONAL REFLECTIONS. Since this staged debate between two New Yorkers, that city has played tug-of-war with its own curbside recycling program

In an effort to revive New York's recycling program and obtain additional material, Hugo Neu Schnitzer East (HNSE) has offered to pay nearly $20 per ton less for metal, plastic and glass collected by the city's Sanitation Commission.

The city had stopped collecting plastic and glass as it coped with a budget crisis. Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty has stated that even with the improved bid from Hugo Neu Schuitzer East, the city will need state dollars to continue collecting plastic and glass containers.

Officers of HNSE said that bids structured like theirs provide a way for recycling to remain a habit for New Yorkers. Their 2003 bid asked the city for a $51-per-ton tip fee for metal, plastic and glass collected by the recycling program, down from an earlier bid of $70 per ton.

"We took a very hard look at our numbers and revised our bid for the recycling of metal, plastic and glass so that the city could restore recycling completely," says Robert Kelman, general manager of HNSE. "With this revised bid, we are confident that the city can bring back recycling at a cost that is considerably less than the cost of exporting the recyclable materials [out of state] as garbage."

According to HNSE, the city had previously been paying an estimated $110 per ton for the transportation and disposal of plastic and glass in the solid waste stream.

"Recycling can work for New York City, from both an environmental and an economic standpoint," says John Neu, chairman of Hugo Neu Corp., one of the two joint venture owners of HNSE. "We firmly believe this, and with this revised bid, we think we've proven it."

HNSE has previously recycled metal collected by the city, which amounts to an average of 6,500 tons per month. The company's original bid offered to pay $5.10 per ton for metals and plastics, leaving out glass. The next two bids have resulted in the city paying a tipping fee in order for HNSE to accept the glass.

Kelman says what is good in the long-term for the city is clear: Establishing a recycling infrastructure makes sense compared to relying on out-of-state landfills.

"Over the course of 15 to 20 years, the savings to the city would grow substantially," says Kelman. "With a long-term commitment, a private company like HNSE can develop markets for recycled materials and make the types of investment in technology and infrastructure that would provide enormous returns for the city--not just in cost savings, but in environmental benefits and the creation of jobs and opportunity for New York City residents."