Recycling Program

Even as towns across America expand recycling programs to meet the demands of increasingly green-minded residents, Ocean City is going against the wave. Its final pickup of cans, bottles and paper from homes and businesses will be next week. Up to three-quarters of the nation now has access to curbside pickup, according to environmental and government groups. But the tourist town is grappling with another national trend: budget troubles. The move will save Ocean City an estimated $1 million in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

All Baltimore schools are now recycling, officials announced Thursday, an initiative that generated 27 tons of recycled material in its first month. Until the systemwide effort began in February, 72 schools out of Baltimore's 205 had separated paper, bottles and cans from other garbage. The announcement, held at Highlandtown Elementary/Middle School, was met with applause from students who have been working to expand recycling this year. As Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and schools CEO Andrés Alonso made the announcement, second- and third-grade students clad in green T-shirts held handmade signs on the front steps of Highlandtown.

Anne Arundel Medical Center implemented a recycling program this week within the Annapolis hospital. Employees selected aluminum cans as the first component of what is expected to be a comprehensive recycling effort. The hospital generates about 1,500 aluminum cans each weekand nearly three tons annually.Environmental Services departmentwill collect cans daily, the Material Management department will deliver cans to the Providence Recycling Center on Spa Road and the Finance department will account for the proceeds.

Howard County will soon allow residents to add banana peels, egg shells and even old pizza boxes to their recyclables, becoming one of the first East Coast localities to start a large-scale composting program. The county is asking almost 5,000 Elkridge and Ellicott City residents this month to participate in the recycling program, which will begin in September and turn more than 20 percent of landfill waste into compost, reducing disposal costs. "We will make a product versus waste," said Evelyn Tomlin, chief of the county Bureau of Environmental Services.

You can help people paint their homes simply by supplying the paint.Bring usable latex paints in labeled, tightly sealed containers from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday to Harrison's Paint Center, 101 N. Main St. in Bel Air, and help launch Harford County's second annual Latex Paint Recycling Program. Last year, residents contributed enough paint to fill 500 one-gallon cans.The donated paint will be mixed on site. After being sent to the Loading Dock, a Baltimore-based building material recycler, the paint is distributed free or sold at a low price to low-income housing projects.

Falling prices for recycled paper has caused a $160,000 shortfall in Howard County's recycling program -- and raised fears that it might someday be cheaper to send all the county's trash to landfills.For several years, Simkins Industries in Catonsville has charged the county nothing to crush its paper into 1-ton blocks, truck them to its plant and recycle them for sale on the wholesale paper market, said John O'Hara, the county's waste-management chief.But the declining price of recycled paper prompted Simkins in December to stop paying for the first step -- turning the paper into blocks for shipment.

The town of Manchester's recycling rate was 18.8 percent in November, says Councilwoman Kathryn L. Riley.In November, the town sent 79.47 tons of trash to the county landfill. During that month, the town recycled 18.45 tons of other trash, she said, saving $738 in tipping fees.The figures are for materials recycled at the curbside only, she said.Mrs. Riley said the amount of garbage the town sent to the landfill in November 1993 was 16.35 tons less than it dumped during November 1992.Asked what caused the decline, Mrs. Riley said, "I want to think it's the recycling bins."

The first phase of a uniform countywide curbside recycling program in Baltimore County begins next month when more than 10,000 households from Overlea to Perry Hall go to a schedule of one trash collection and one recycling pickup a week.By July 1, 1995, all 200,000 single-family and townhouse residences in the county will have the same "one and one" curbside recycling schedule. About 2,300 residences in the first-phase area now have some sort of recycling program.County Executive Roger B. Hayden, who announced the first-phase location Friday, said that after two years of experimenting with various schedules, "one and one" proved to be the most cost effective.

FOR MANY children, recess is a chance to go outside and enjoy nature. For Steven Morton and Sean Meehan, recess is a chance to save Earth. Well, at least a small part of it. Every Friday, these West Friendship Elementary fourth-graders spend their recess time going around the school emptying recycling bins into large cans. Steven and Sean began planning their school's recycling program last fall as an enrichment project with the school's Gifted and Talented Program resource teacher, Elsa Fawcett.

The final step in a countywide recycling program is about to be taken, and all apartment and condominium dwellers have to do is ask.All houses in the county have had curbside pickup of paper and containers since July 1993, but apartment dwellers still must haul their recyclables to the Mobile Recycling Truck (MoRt), the county landfill's recycling center in Marriottsville or to a private recycler.By summer's end, the county will start placing mobile recycling containers next to trash bins in 10 apartment complexes as a pilot program for the county's apartment recycling program, said Paul A. McIntyre, the county's residential recycling coordinator.

5k run/walk Registration is underway for the "Moving Around the World" 5K Run and Walk sponsored by the Rotary Club of Annapolis and the Rotaract Club of Annapolis on April 9. Event will be held in Quiet Waters Park's Sassafras Pavilion off Hillsmere Drive in Annapolis. Advance registration is $25; $30 on day of event; free for children 12 and younger. Sign in and race packet pick up is from 8:45 a.m. to 9:45 a.m., with runners beginning at 10 a.m., followed by the walkers.

In response to "Baltimore County lauds expansion of single-stream recycling" (Nov. 23), I would like to point out a possible fatal flaw. I live at Henderson Webb apartments in Cockeysville and was very excited to hear we too were participating in the recycling program. When you reported that at one apartment complex, "all 10 recycling containers, which each hold two cubic yards, were full," I wondered what they were full of. At my apartment complex, all of our recycling dumpsters have been full as well.

A 600-unit apartment complex in Pikesville demonstrated how eagerly residents of Baltimore County's apartment and condominium complexes have responded to the expansion of single-stream recycling to their households. On Monday, the scheduled collection day at St. Charles at Old Court Apartments, all 10 recycling containers, which each hold two cubic yards, were full. County officials used the complex as a backdrop as they promoted the success of the expanded recycling program, which began six weeks ago and is among the first in the state to serve multifamily dwellings.

The tangle of kids moved furiously around the bins after lunch. They tossed milk jugs in the yellow bin, napkins and half-eaten hot dogs in the green one and trays in the gray one. Students at Baltimore's Federal Hill Preparatory School haven't just been recycling the usual items, like paper and plastic, this year. They've sorted everything — from crayon pieces and pencil shavings to leftover meals. The full-bore effort to eliminate waste has been a project of Sheryl Barr's environmental studies class of sixth, seventh and eighth-graders, and has spread to many students' homes.

Even as towns across America expand recycling programs to meet the demands of increasingly green-minded residents, Ocean City is going against the wave. Its final pickup of cans, bottles and paper from homes and businesses will be next week. Up to three-quarters of the nation now has access to curbside pickup, according to environmental and government groups. But the tourist town is grappling with another national trend: budget troubles. The move will save Ocean City an estimated $1 million in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

* Greg Oliver, 21, of Clarksville, manager of Clemens Crossing neighborhood pool:I think that a lot of residents, especially in Columbia, do a pretty good job of recycling already. We have blue recycling bins at all the Columbia summer pools and everyone seems to want tohelp out and pitch in. But maybe a minimum recycling requirement would get more people involved.