Recycling Program

Baltimore will order thousands more recycling bins and will make them available in three weeks, officials in Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration said yesterday. Thousands of people stood in line for hours over the weekend to buy the recycling bins, which can be used for the city's new single-stream recycling program. The city quickly ran out of its 10,000-bin supply. "This was actually a good thing," Dixon said yesterday. "It was a problem that was a good problem. I know some people were frustrated about the long lines, but what I heard is that because we're going to single-stream recycling, people have now decided to recycle."

Community groups and city leaders hailed Baltimore's streamlined recycling program as the key to increasing public participation. And yesterday the public responded - en masse. Frigid and grumpy, throngs of environmentally conscious Baltimoreans waited in long lines for hours to purchase bright-yellow recycling containers - and many heard the bad news that supplies had run out. "They just don't have what they need to take care of everybody," said Robert Lewis, a resident of Overlea who waited more than two hours among several hundred would-be recyclers at Montebello Elementary School, where bins were sold.

ROCKVILLE -- His highly publicized recycling program in ruins, an angry Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan yesterday demanded an apology from those he holds responsible: the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, the County Council and his own advisers."

Howard County's recycling program, built on the premise of saving money while saving the environment, has reached a crisis: It will soon cost more to recycle cans, bottles and yard waste than to bury them in a landfill.That doesn't mean residents should start tossing their cola bottles and grass cuttings into the trash. County officials and recycling experts say market forces could restore the profitability of recyclables in just a few months.But for now, the problem spotlights an economic quandary at the heart of the recycling revolution across the nation: Can the demand for recyclables keep pace with the ever-growing supply?

IT STILL pays to recycle. Yes, it is becoming more expensive for Howard County to recycle paper, bottles, cans and yard waste at a time when administrators are getting bargain rates for sending solid waste to a landfill. Soon the county will pay almost the same price to dispose of waste, regardless of whether it is recycled or buried in the ground.Howard pays only $33 a ton to have its waste transported to a Virginia landfill. When the county signs new contracts, it will cost only slightly less than that to recycle an average ton of material.

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.

Howard County's strict new trash policy -- the toughest of any county in the Baltimore area -- is showing early signs of getting residents to recycle more and throw away less.In the four full months since the new policy took effect in July, the amount of trash collected by the county decreased by 13 percent compared with a year ago, while total recyclables -- glass, bottles, paper and yard waste -- increased by 45 percent.County officials caution that data from just a few months can be misleading, particularly for a period when publicity about the program was strong and Howard's yard-waste recycling program expanded dramatically.

County residents who get their yard waste picked up by the Department of Public Works still have 10 more days to recycle their Christmas trees.The last day that county recycling contractors will pick up trees in those areas -- all in the eastern part of the county -- will be Jan. 16. Residents should put out the trees on their regular recycling days.Western county residents, who do not get yard waste picked up by the county, need to dispose of their trees on their own.One option is taking the trees to the Alpha Ridge Landfill in Marriottsville, where all the county's recycled trees will be chipped into mulch and shipped to The Mulch Factory, a private company, on Daniels Road in Ellicott City.

Though the county has reached the point where it can collect recyclable paper, cans and most bottles from all county homes, not everyone has -- or wants -- the free service.A lack of enthusiasm among a few apartment managers and condominium associations to accept the popular free service has left some residents without a benefit that most others in the county now enjoy."I'm a little distraught that we were never asked," said Sally Yasenka, who has lived for five years in a townhouse in Glen Meadows Condominiums in Columbia's Town Center, one of 13 complexes around the county that have refused the recycling pickup.

Limos not the sameI would like to share an experience my husband and I had this past spring.In March, we were fortunate enough to go on a cruise. Instead of paying to park our car at the airport for a week we decided to hire a limousine to drive us to and from the airport.A bit more expensive than paying to park, but the convenience was worth it. The cost of renting the limousine to pick us up at our door and deliver us to the boarding entrance of the airport was $40 plus 15 percent tip, a total of $46.In April, my mother-in-law passed away.

Anne Arundel County is expanding its recycling program to include several more plastics, papers and metals, as part of a larger effort to encourage residents to recycle half of what they dispose. Among the items now eligible for curbside recycling service are: plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic plates and plastic utensils, paper milk and juice cartons, and aluminum foil and pans. "There's no additional cost," said Richard Bowen, the solid waste recycling manager for Anne Arundel's Department of Public Works.

One month into a new single-stream recycling program, Baltimore experienced a modest gain in the amount of material being collected and hopes to see steady growth into this year, public works officials said yesterday. Single-stream recycling, which started Jan. 8 in Baltimore, lets residents place all recyclable material into one bin to be collected on the same day. Under the old system, the city picked up paper and other types of recyclables on alternating weeks. Valentina Ukwuoma, head of the solid waste bureau of the Department of Public Works, said the city collected 50 tons more recyclable material in January than it did in January 2007 - a roughly 4.5 percent increase.

Hours in the cold for a recycling bin Baltimore's Department of Public Works invited Baltimoreans to come get new, yellow recycling trash cans and bins (for $6 and $5, respectively) at selected locations on Saturday. As recyclers, a neighbor and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity ("Enthusiastic, empty-handed," Dec. 16). We arrived at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute at 10:10 a.m., 10 minutes after the distribution was scheduled to begin. The temperature was in the mid-30s, and we were greeted by a line that wrapped circuitously through the Polytechnic Institute parking lot. Two hours later, as humans in this March of the Penguins, we made it to the front of the line to receive our yellow recycling containers, emblazoned with Mayor Sheila Dixon's name.

Baltimore will order thousands more recycling bins and will make them available in three weeks, officials in Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration said yesterday. Thousands of people stood in line for hours over the weekend to buy the recycling bins, which can be used for the city's new single-stream recycling program. The city quickly ran out of its 10,000-bin supply. "This was actually a good thing," Dixon said yesterday. "It was a problem that was a good problem. I know some people were frustrated about the long lines, but what I heard is that because we're going to single-stream recycling, people have now decided to recycle."

Community groups and city leaders hailed Baltimore's streamlined recycling program as the key to increasing public participation. And yesterday the public responded - en masse. Frigid and grumpy, throngs of environmentally conscious Baltimoreans waited in long lines for hours to purchase bright-yellow recycling containers - and many heard the bad news that supplies had run out. "They just don't have what they need to take care of everybody," said Robert Lewis, a resident of Overlea who waited more than two hours among several hundred would-be recyclers at Montebello Elementary School, where bins were sold.

Plastic bag ban hurts recycling Your article "Recycling is easier, starting today" (July 1, 2007) does well to stress the importance of environmentally responsible behavior, specifically recycling. People are not aware that plastic bags are 100 percent recyclable and, in many cases, a more environmentally-friendly choice. Extreme measures like proposed bans in Annapolis and Baltimore are likely to have unintended negative consequences to the environment and local economy and create immeasurable social costs.

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.

In Baltimore City Council delays vote on plan to change Board of Estimates The City Council opted not to vote last night on a plan to wrest Baltimore's Board of Estimates from the mayor's control, sending the bill back to committee instead. The bill calls for eliminating two mayoral appointees from the five-member board - the city solicitor and public works director. That would leave three elected officials, the mayor, council president and comptroller. Even with council approval, the plan would have to survive a likely mayoral veto and win approval from voters as a ballot question.

When Baltimore rejiggered its recycling program in January, officials promised the changes would save money and streamline operations, and city statistics indicate that they have accomplished that. But the revamping also has sown confusion and frustration among many recyclers, prompting some to haul their old newspapers, cans and bottles to dumps, and others to simply give up. "The original system was so perfect," said Jim Burger, a board member of the Keswick Improvement Association who still recycles.

After new recycling procedures led to protests last month, Baltimore officials are returning to a system of picking up paper, plastic, glass and cans in the rear of houses in more than a dozen city neighborhoods. The about-face, announced Friday, will expand to 21 the number of neighborhoods receiving recycling collection services behind their homes. The changes in the neighborhoods will occur this month, officials said. In January, the city switched to a system of curbside-only collection in its residential recycling program, which quickly set off a flurry of letters and calls to city officials from unhappy residents.