Recycling Program

There's something ironic about county bureaucrats' carrying off little potted trees back to the same offices where they shuffle through mountains of paper.But it seemed a fitting symbol of a new recycling effort launched yesterday in 14 county office buildings."You are the key to making our paper-recycling program a success.We're asking citizens to recycle. We have to set the example," County Executive Robert R. Neall told the 41 recycling captains who were commissioned with the presentation of potted white pine seedlings.

State government was in a bind when a contractor on it months-old recycling program went bankrupt in 1990.That's when The Athelas Institute in Columbia stepped in to help. By collecting, sorting and baling hundreds of tons of office paper, Athelas workers saved the program, state officials say.The institute, a private, nonprofit organization that trains developmentally disabled people and places them in jobs, recently received the state environment department's Environmental Excellence Award and the governor's Salute to Excellence for its involvement in the program, which aims to reduce solid waste by 20 percent by 1994.

* 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.

A comprehensive recycling program that will enable Western Maryland College to recycle plastic, glass and metal cans has been endowed by the 1991 Senior Pride Campaign.The campaign, conducted by studentleaders of the Class of 1991 as a gift to the college, recently achieved its goal of $2,000.That amount will be matched three to one by developer Martin K. P. Hill of Masonry Contractors, whose daughter, Jennifer, is a junior at WMC. The $8,000 total will support the college recycling program that began on campus earlier this year.

The residents of 323 Bel Air households will be getting the county'sattention when they start putting blue bags filled with glass, plastic, cans, newspapers and yard waste at their curbs later this month.Bel Air administrators have selected the homes in the Major's Choice, Howard Park, Bradford Village and Homestead neighborhoods for a pilot program to see how the town's proposed recycling program will work.Because the Bel Air program is nearly identical to the one the county plans to introduce to about 52,000 households next year, the outcome of the town's four-month test could set the standard for Harford.

Howard County hopes to save about $45,000 in the next seven weeks by recycling 2 million pounds of leaves.Although the "pilot recycling program" targets 6,000 homes in four neighborhoods scattered throughout the county, anyone can participate.Residents can bag and bring their leaves to a recycling truck that will travel to nine locations in the county every week between now and Dec. 22.Leaf pickup for people in the targeted areas will start 7 a.m. on four consecutive Saturdays beginning Nov. 10.Prior to the pilot recycling program here, most county residents got rid of their leaves by bundling them as trash.

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.

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.

Anne Arundel County Executive Robert R. Neall will introduce Quiet Waters Park's aluminum can recycling program at 9:30 a.m. today at thepark visitors' center by pitching the first soda cans into the new containers.The recycling program was made possible through a donation by the Bay Ridge McDonald's to the Friends of Quiet Waters Park, who purchased 30 containers to be placed near existing refuse containers throughout the park.The program is a pilot for the county park system and will eventually be extended to other county parks.

How does a city leader demonstrate Baltimore's commitment to curbside recycling?If you're Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, you tossed boxes of used paper onto a garbage truck as you kicked off a curbside recycling program yesterday in southwest Baltimore.Schmoke visited the home of Annie Albert, in the 1200 block of Wicklow Road in Rognel Heights, to introduce the city's paper recycling program to the neighborhood.He said 78,000 homes already have curbside pickup of paper products, and, as of yesterday, an additional 34,000homes will be served.