Focusing on Recycling, Not the Exporting of Garbage

It took a half a year to get the final calculations, but Seattle proudly announced yesterday that its waste recycling hit 50% in 2008.  It got there a lot slower than expected (previous blog here), and the 60% goal by 2012 still looks rather steep.  But, at least it's making progress.

In 2008, Seattle’s single-family residents diverted 65.4 percent of their waste through recycling and composting, up from 64.8 percent in 2007. Multifamily residents recycled 28.3 of their waste, up from 27.6 the previous year.

Commercial recycling climbed 2.2 percentage points, to 54.7 percent in 2008. And 18.4 percent of waste dropped off at the city’s two recycling and disposal stations was diverted to recycling or compost in 2008.

One of the key ways Seattle hopes to achieve that impending 60 percent goal is by improving the recycling of organics, especially food wastes.  Residential programs get the most publicity, but the foodservice industry is a big player.  Switching links...

The foodservice industry is one of the most significant producers of food and materials waste on the planet, Shakman said. In fact, Seattle foodservice operations alone produce almost 30 percent of the nearly 500,000 tons of waste the city ships to landfills via nearly 4,500 railcars, according to Carl Woestwin, landscape team leader for Seattle Public Utilities.

And of course, most of that garbage comes here to Oregon.  Remember that whenever Seattle pretends it's concerned about climate change.  Same goes for Portland, Vancouver WA (and maybe soon BC), Olympia, and other long-distance customers of the big landfill in Arlington.  However, Seattle did send less garbage to Oregon last year.  Returning to the original article.

With increased recycling and less solid waste generated last year, Seattle reduced the amount of garbage shipped to a landfill in Arlington, Ore., by 40,000 tons.

Their reduction is our loss. 

Comments

[OregonGuy]

Is there ever any statement that refers to the amount of public funds (your tax dollars) are needed to accomplish such a laudible outcome?
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[RoguePundit]

Many cities seem to go out of their way to bury that in their accounting...except when they want to cut back things like collecting cans in city parks. In writing this post, I went through the Seattle Public Utilities report that showed how much gargabe was disposed of in 2008 (no separate city line items) and how it developed its rates for 2009-2011. The report never discussed how much the city was paying, the manhours expended recycling, etc.