What can you and your community do about recycling? - includes related articles

Disposable is fast becoming a dirty word. The glory days of the throwaway society are behind us. Instead, the need to save landfill space, trees, oil, water, and electricity, as well as to reduce air and ground pollution, has led us back to recycling-common practice in all but the last few decades. What makes recycling an issue now is primarily waste reduction. Landfills are close to full in the West. They are already full in several Eastern states, where recycling is being enforced. Out here, our current voluntary recycling of two or three items (bottles, cans, newspapers) will likely soon become mandatory recycling of five or six items (add plastics, yard waste, and other paper products). Some communities are already enacting garbage-separation ordinances, per state mandate (California's Integrated Solid Waste Management Act demands that each city develop a waste-reduction plan to reduce waste by 25 percent by 1995, 50 percent by 2000). In the following pages, we share some readers' ideas on making recycling easier, give you tips on how to expand your recycling efforts easily, and offer a glimpse of recycling practices you can anticipate-and help enact-in your community. Setting up your recycling: some rules of thumb The first step is to determine the state of recycling in your community. Call your city planning, public works, or sanitation department or local waste hauler to locate recycling centers or to find out curbside pickup schedules. Find out everything the recyclers will take; push them on what they're anticipating taking in the future (this article will give you some ideas). A concerted neighborhood effort can impel them to take more. Once you know what and where you can recycle, determine how much room to set aside in your house for storing recyclables. If you have curbside pickup, plan for that time span (usually weekly or fortnightly). If you don't have the imposed routine of curbside, set up your own schedule-weekly, monthly, whatever-then plan holding space accordingly. Your best bet for space planning is to accumulate your routine amount of recyclables and measure it. Then set up your storage system, building in a little more room. Bins or drawers should be easy to open and keep securely closed, easy to empty, easy to clean slick. surfaces, no nooks and crannies). If your recycler accepts compacted material, crush aluminum cans, stomp down plastic bottles, break down cardboard boxes, put smaller glass jars inside larger ones. Reducing bulk is particularly important if you're limited to using only the bins supplied by your city's recycling contractor. Unless you're remodeling your kitchen with recycling storage solutions built in, keep kitchen storage small and simple. Larger, intermediate storage is better placed elsewhere, in your garage or garbage can storage area-closer to curb or car. Make sure storage cabinets or shelves will accommodate community-issued bins-they can be an odd size. Breaking down the waste stream Cutting down on the amount of garbage you accumulate m the first place will put a significant dent in your trash load (see page 104). How much of the remaining garbage is recyclable? Technically, just about all of it is, but a 50 percent recycling goal is quite feasible today; Seattle is shooting for 60 percent by 1998. To see what doesn't need to go to the dump, we've broken down typical household trash into its component parts by volume.

PAPER AND PAPERBOARD

(42% of your trash) Newspapers are the largest single component of landfills, 14 percent by volume. Oversupply of newspapers has reduced recyclers' demand for them (some communities now pay recyclers to take their newsprint). Legislation is forcing demand: in California, newspapers must use 25 percent recycled stock by 1992, 50 percent by 2000. Paper mills are now rushing to build in de-inking capacity to handle the recycled stock. There's also a ready market for high-grade office and computer paper. To help set up a program in your office, call your local recycler. If you generate your own supply of excess computer paper, take it to your office for recycling if it won't be picked up at home. Mixed paper stocks-letters, magazines, catalogs, packaging-have little domestic market. Few recyclers take magazines because removing the ink, the glossy clay paper coating, and other contaminants is costly and difficult. And at present, it's just too costly to print major magazines like Sunset on recycled paper, which is heavier and more expensive than the paper this story is printed on. Current recycled paper stocks are at best about 10 percent post-consumer waste, 40 percent preconsumer waste (trimmings, roll ends, misprints), and about 50 percent virgin paper. Mixed paper collected in Seattle is shipped to the Far East, where it's sorted and recycled or incinerated as fuel. Seattle "loses" money on this, but the cost is still less than the expense of putting it in a landfill. You can extend the usefulness of your magazines by passing them on to schools, hospitals, senior centers, and other community centers where they can be shared. One way to encourage paper recycling is to buy stationery, computer paper, and other products made from recycled paper, and products packaged in recycled paper. The chasing arrow symbol means the product is recyclable; a legitimate label will say how to recycle it. If the product is made from recycled materials, the arrow may be in a black circle, or it may just say so on the label. You can also cut down on the amount of junk mail you receive. Many catalogs and magazines will, at your request, remove your name from their lists which they rent to other vendors). They'll also make sure that multiple copies of the same catalog don't go to one household under several different names. Or write to Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, I I W. 42nd St., Box 3861, New York 10163. The association will place your name on a computer tape that large list brokers check to remove names from their clients' mailings. This can reduce your unsolicited mail by up to 80 percent, though it may also stop some mailings you want to keep getting.