Recyclable Materials

Don't plan on having trash haulers pick up bottles and other glass when the county launches its voluntary recycling plan in January.County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann is temporarily dropping glass collection from her proposed recycling plan. The reason: Tests showed that the glass tears the blue plastic bags she is proposing be used for placing recyclables in for pickup. Much of the glass shattered and ripped the bags during the tests, said George Harrison, spokesman for the county.Rather than delay the County Council's review of the entire recycling program, Rehrmann withdrew glass collection until trash haulers and the county find a way to collect it so that it won't damage the bags, said Harrison.

Piled on two rolling carts: four panel doors, two cases of gray ceramic tile, two bags of grout, one white pedestal sink, still boxed, and a pail of mortar. The doors need some work. The tiles are in perfect shape: unused. The sink is in the original box. Grand total: $156, less than half the retail price. The castoffs of some homeowner or builder have become the treasures of another at the Loading Dock, a nonprofit Baltimore warehouse that sells reusable building goods and builder's seconds.

The county commissioners have ordered private trash haulers to pick up recyclable materials from residential customers starting July 1. Except in some towns, however, residents are encouraged but not required to sort out recyclables -- newspapers, cardboard, glass, metal cans and some plastics.The immediate aim is to begin complying with state law, which requires counties to recycle a percentage of their solid waste. The commissioners also want to reduce the amount of refuse going into the landfills, thus deferring the cost of establishing new landfills.

Amy Milauskas and Carol Tortella want to do more for the environment than hang up public-service announcements and oversee traditional recycling campaigns. The two Wilde Lake Middle School teachers were among nearly 40 Howard County educators who attended a training session offered this week by the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education on how schools can join its Green School Recognition program. Ten Howard County schools are members of the program, which encourages schools to adopt more environmentally friendly practices and infuse environmental content into the curriculum.

It looks like the county executive's trash recycling proposal is in for a tough haul.The County Council spent two hours Wednesday afternoon picking apart the proposal that is based on voluntary residential sorting of some recyclables for curbside pickup."

Harford residents will probably continue getting twice-a-week trash pickup when the county begins its curbside recycling program this winter.But a problem, some business leaders say, is that at least one of those days will be for recyclable materials only.Stuart J. Robinson, a Bel Air lawyer, told County Council membersat a Tuesday public hearing that commercial customers and businessesmay still need a twice-weekly pickup of regular trash."It's an additional tax to business," said Robinson.

Planners froom Howard and three other counties will meet today to talk about the region's trash and what to dod with it.The governments of Howard, Carroll, Frederick and Washington counties have spent 1 years searching for solutions for disposing the nearly 2,000 tons of solid waste the four counties generate each day.The Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority, a quasi-state agency conducting the study, is looking at eight combinations of waste disposal...

By the time I've downed my second cup of coffee on Saturdays, I have to make the big decision of the day. Is this the day I am going to attempt to unload the newspapers and bottles at a recycling center?There are two parts to recycling. The first part consists of getting all the recyclable materials together in your home. The second part consists of getting them out of your house and into a recycling center.I've mastered the first part. My family can pile up trash, also called recyclable materials, faster than you can say "ashes to ashes, soda cans to flattened metal, and wine bottles to ground glass."

TC SYKESVILLE -- The county commissioners have told the town it will lose a $2 discount on landfill tipping fees if it continues taking newspapers to Phoenix Recycling Inc., the county's recycling contractor."

Over the past 10 years, developer Robert Catzen has built warehouses in Anne Arundel County, apartments in Harford County and office space in downtown Baltimore. As the head of Dalsemer, Catzen and Associates, he usually has two or three buildings under way at any given time. But this year, he says, he has nothing coming out of the ground -- and nothing on the horizon.While he waits for market conditions to improve in the real estate industry, Mr. Catzen has gone into a field where he sees some of the same demand he used to see for real estate: recycling.

When Chuck Fox and his family decided it was time to remodel their Crownsville home, they had a lot of questions about what to use and how much it would all cost, but one thing was for sure - the only color on the palette would be green. An environmentally friendly design - often referred to as "green building" - was a given for Fox, former director of the state Department of Natural Resources and currently senior policy adviser at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. That meant optimal use of the sun, recycled supplies and new materials that had the least negative impact on the environment.

The apparent financial troubles of a Baltimore recycling company have several metropolitan counties scrambling to find a vendor to handle tons of discarded glass, plastic, cardboard and paper. Partners Quality Recycling Services has told Carroll, Harford, Howard counties and Baltimore that it intends to quit the business and will terminate its contracts at stated expiration dates. In Carroll, which recycles more than half of its trash, that would be June 30, 2003. Baltimore will rebid its contract this year, said Department of Public Works spokesman Kurt Kocher.

IT'S EASY FOR County Executive Janet S. Owens to talk about encouraging her constituents to recycle more. Those words are cheap and safe. Taking the bold steps that will get people to stop filling up the Millersville landfill with recyclable materials, on the other hand, is hard and could be risky. Ms. Owens wasn't ready to face the risk when she rejected her own officials' controversial but sensible recommendations to boost recycling by reducing trash collections from semiweekly to weekly.

The county commissioners adopted yesterday a 10-year plan to extend the life of Carroll's Northern Landfill by recycling liquid waste and converting building debris into road construction material.After minor revisions, the 1999 Solid Waste Management Plan will be forwarded next month to the Maryland Department of the Environment, county officials said. The agency must approve the 271-page document before it can be implemented. The approval process is expected to take about 60 days."The bottom line is, we want to do things that will slow the use of the landfill's existing space or recapture some of the space," Gary Horst, the county's director of enterprise and recreation services, told the commissioners during a brief public hearing yesterday on the waste management plan.

EL PRADO, N.M. -- Construction on Karin Payne's dream home has stopped.No more hammers pounding dirt into tires. It's been weeks since an empty Bud Light can was screwed into a mud wall.Payne's dream home is a desert Earthship, crafted from recycled materials with power only from the sun and running water only from the clouds. "My goal was to have zero impact on the exploitation of the earth or of people," says Payne, 39, a refugee from West Coast yuppiedom. A baseball cap shields her eyes from the sun and her ponytail from the wind as she sits cross-legged in the dirt looking over blueprints.

Two Mount Airy men plan to open a facility that recycles roofing materials into a product that can be used in road construction.The business, which has received preliminary approval from the Mount Airy Planning and Zoning Commission, would be the first of its kind in Maryland, said Don Katzenberger, a partner in the company."

Larry Klimovitz sat in front of the lecture hall at the Southampton Middle School in Bel Air to give his lesson.Klimovitz, the county's director of administration, wasn't about to teach a class on the Three R's. He was interested in the fourth R -- recycling.About 40 people attended the public forum, which was organized toexplain the county's proposed voluntary trash recycling program, which could start in June.The Wednesday night session, sponsored by the Susquehannock Environmental Center and the Community Coalition ofHarford County, was part of the county's efforts to educate citizenson trash recycling.

IT'S EASY FOR County Executive Janet S. Owens to talk about encouraging her constituents to recycle more. Those words are cheap and safe. Taking the bold steps that will get people to stop filling up the Millersville landfill with recyclable materials, on the other hand, is hard and could be risky. Ms. Owens wasn't ready to face the risk when she rejected her own officials' controversial but sensible recommendations to boost recycling by reducing trash collections from semiweekly to weekly.

Curbside recycling recently arrived in my Baltimore County neighborhood and I guess things are going smoothly, if you don't count all the people hauling stuff out to the curb and wailing: "What pickup is this -- bottles and cans, right? What? It's newspapers? Dammit, I told her it was newspapers . . ."Yeah, it seems some of us are having a slight problem memorizing the new collection schedule.And since the new collection schedule seems designed for a second-grader to understand, this offers stark new evidence that the human brain continues to grow smaller and is now approximately the size of a pistachio.

BOWIE -- It's been dubbed the "garbage house" -- because old plastic milk jugs and newspapers were used to build it -- but it looks like a typical upscale suburban home.It's the National Association of Home Builders' "resource conservation home," a 3,600-square-foot model unveiled last week to demonstrate energy-efficient building methods. The goal is to conserve resources by using recycled materials and saving energy, for example, by using alternative energy sources to heat the house.The home, which cost $200,000 to build, will be open to visitors for about a year before being put up for sale.