Curbside Recycling Reaches More in Northwest Arkansas

Twenty years ago, there was one curbside recycling program in the United States.

Heightened environmental awareness among citizens and concern about dwindling landfill space among cities has led to a recycling boom across the U.S. The country now recycles 32.5 percent of its waste, doubling the rate in the last 15 years.

By 2006, there were 8,660 curbside programs across the country and more than 500 material recovery facilities had been established.

As of December 2007, four major cities in Northwest Arkansas now have curbside recycling available with Bentonville the last to jump on board.

While agreement on the benefits of recycling is universal, recycling programs are notorious for losing money as the overhead costs of collection and processing often outweigh the revenue generated by selling plastics, paper and aluminum cans on the open market.

Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville have “single stream” recycling programs operated by private contractors with all recyclables co-mingled while Fayetteville’s city-operated program uses trucks as sorting platforms to separate the various commodities at the curb.

True to its image, Fayetteville has the oldest (since 1998), most comprehensive recycling program and yes, it loses money on an annual basis. In 2007, the recycling program cost around $1.5 million to operate while collecting $672,726 in revenue from the sale of 10 products. Since 2002, Fayetteville has collected $2.74 million from the sale of recyclables.

The shortfall is offset by the total fees collected by the solid waste department, which operates outside of the city’s general fund and has an annual budget of $8.5 million.

Fayetteville is in the midst of a study conducted by consulting firm R.W. Beck at a cost of $110,000 to explore ways to expand the program, according to Waste Reduction Coordinator Brian Pugh.

“We’re getting a lot of pressure from the business community to expand it,” Pugh said. “We are lacking on commercial recycling, especially with apartments. Those are areas we have to look at and check out cost structures.”

Pugh said he takes calls daily from businesses that want to recycle, which may make the first increase in commercial collection rates since 2000 feasible. Areas being examined are the benefits of switching to a “single-stream” system, which would allow an expansion in volume collected but would also require major capital investment in trucks and the sorting facility.

Compactor trucks are currently running around $225,000 each, while new segmented trucks Fayetteville uses now are around $161,000.

Going to a single-stream collection like the other cities would have pros and cons, Pugh said. On one hand, it would allow incorporating businesses and apartment complexes that would only require the addition of another dumpster, but it would eliminate some commodities from collection.

Rogers residents cannot recycle glass in a single-stream system because companies who buy glass want it separated into clear, green and brown. The breaking and mixing of glass makes it mostly unusable and would exclude one of the biggest sources of waste from bars and restaurants.

“The ‘want-to’ for recycling is there,” he said. “Most businesses are understanding that the residential program is not set up to handle commercial, but some businesses get mad at you when they can’t have it. We have to see if we can justify it through a fee increase.”

Recycling Rewards

The Fayetteville program may lose money, but it has certainly proven to be highly effective in reducing the city’s waste stream.

The number of households with residential carts for trash collection has increased by 16.2 percent since 2003, to 18,773 in 2007.

Over the same time, which coincides with the beginning of the pay as you throw, or PAYT, program, Fayetteville’s residential tonnage of solid waste has increased only 11.6 percent, and much of that increase happened between 2003 and 2004. The city added 836 households and total residential tonnage increased by 7.2 percent.

Since 2004, the city’s annual trash output has increased by less than 500 tons, or 4 percent, while household carts increased by 9.6 percent.

Meanwhile, the amount of recycling tonnage has outpaced new households since 2003 with a 16.3 percent increase to nearly 5,700 tons in 2007.

At current landfill rates, recycling saved the city around $140,000 in fees during 2007.

“It’s been shown to be a good program and it gets people to focus on recycling,” Pugh said.

Current estimates by Pugh are around a 57 percent participation rate in Fayetteville, which he said is higher than national averages.

Compare that to Springdale, which has only an 8.6 percent participation rate in Waste Management’s curbside program that charges customers $2.29 per month to recycle.

From June 2007 to June 2008, Springdale’s 16,875 households served by Waste Management generated 20,435 tons of waste while recycling just 500 tons.

That figures out to be 2,400 pounds of trash per household in Springdale compared to less than 1,371 pounds per household in Fayetteville. 

Springdale’s contract with Waste Management runs through 2010 and finance director Wyman Morgan said the main thing the city wants to do with a new contract is work on the recycling component.

“You don’t get as much participation when the recycling is voluntary,” he said.

Waste Management, a multi-national corporation which recycled enough paper to save 41 million trees last year, sent  a letter in both English and Spanish last July encouraging participation in the program. According to senior district manager Ken Gardner, it led to a 42.8 percent increase in participation during the last 12 months, from 1,020 households to 1,457, and a 45 percent increase in recycling tonnage.

Bentonville, which pays Allied Waste $3.2 million for solid waste collections, reported a 32 percent increase in recycling tonnage collected over all of 2007 in just the first five weeks of 2008.

Participation numbers in Rogers are difficult to pinpoint. Travis Johnson of Inland Services, which has had the Rogers contract since 2006, estimated participation at 75 percent while Gardner said when Waste Management had the contract it was around 40 percent to 45 percent.

Eco-nomics

As much as the opportunity to recycle has made participation easier, the PAYT program in Fayetteville provides the most financial incentive to do so.

Fayetteville offers a staggered price system for trash carts. Recycling is free, but a 32-gallon cart for trash costs $8.75 per month, a 64-gallon cart costs $13.35 and a 96-gallon cart costs $18.96.

In this respect, PAYT (adopted by around 6,000 cities) treats trash as a utility no different than water or electric where customers pay for what they use.

Compared to the other cities in Northwest Arkansas, Fayetteville easily offers the strongest incentive to cut waste.

In Springdale, a residence may put out two carts of any size or an unlimited number of trash bags for $10.71 per month.

In Bentonville, a 96-gallon cart costs just $10.79 per month. In Rogers, there is only a $1 difference in cost per month between a 32-gallon cart ($11.59) and a 96-gallon cart ($12.65). Rogers residents may also put out any number of trash bags for collection.

In Fayetteville, if the lid is propped open on an overfilled cart even by just an inch, the resident is charged an extra $6, with four stickers issued per year to use when trash exceeds the cart volume.

Using the PAYT method makes Fayetteville eligible for recycling grants and Mayor Dan Coody said the recycling program is a draw to the kind of people and industries the city is trying to lure as the hub of “Green Valley.”

“Everybody is glad when they come to Fayetteville and see that we are conscious enough to have a good program,” Coody said. “The people we’re trying to attract – the creative class, the folks to help us achieve our goals – expect the quality of life and the amenities of a world-class city.

“If we don’t provide it, we’re just reinforcing the stereotype of Arkansas as being a state that’s not up with the times.”