What a waste (Continued) BY STEVEN STYCOS

MUNICIPAL RECYCLING, although not in as miserable condition as business recycling, also needs major improvement. While 40 percent of municipal waste (excluding yard waste) can be recycled, Resource Recovery estimates, only about 15 percent of the refuse currently makes it to the conveyor belts at the Materials Recycling Facility.

Once again, the trash managers say the largest problem is money — it’s simply too cheap to dump everything in the trash. The General Assembly hasn’t increased the $32-per-ton tipping fee paid by municipalities since 1993, and this price is about half of what communities in Massachusetts and Connecticut pay to dump their trash, Trevor says. In 2002, most municipal recycling rates were anemic: Providence recycled a mere 10 percent, according to Resource Recovery; Pawtucket 11 percent; and Cranston 19 percent. Warwick (24 percent) and Barrington (27 percent) did better, but the best recycling rates occurred in Narragansett, North Kingstown, and South Kingstown.

The three South County towns use a Pay As You Throw (PAYT) system, in which residents pay a fee for each bag of trash that they bring to the town transfer station. The idea is simple, says Trevor: "If you put out a lot more trash, shouldn’t you be bearing more of that cost, the same as you would with a utility?" More than 5000 communities nationwide, including 101 in Massachusetts, have PAYT, according to Trevor. But in Rhode Island, only Narragansett, North Kingstown, South Kingstown, and New Shoreham have implemented the system.

"Nothing has proven more successful," Trevor notes. In 1994, South Kingstown and Narragansett started charging residents a dollar a bag for trash delivered to the Rose Hill Regional Transfer Station, while recyclables were processed at no cost. Backed by that small financial incentive, recycling jumped from an estimated five percent in 1993, says public services director Jon Schrock, to 42 percent currently. A typical four-person household now drops only one bag of trash a week, he says, and a single person needs a bag only once every two weeks.

North Kingstown established a curbside PAYT system in July 1999, and its recycling increased from 17 percent to 28 percent in one year, according to North Kingstown public works secretary Kim Jones. Recycling in Portland, Maine, went from seven percent to 35 percent, while Brockton, Massachusetts, more than doubled its recycling rate with a PAYT approach introduced in October 2001, says Trevor. These trash reductions mean not only longer landfill lives, but considerable savings, even at $32 per ton. North Kingstown saved an annual $132,448 in tipping fees two years after PAYT began, according to Resource Recovery figures, and South Kingstown was saving $173,856 a year.

But as Trevor notes, PAYT must overcome potent resistance. Opponents call the program a "new tax" and capitalize on many residents’ belief that they have a right to put whatever trash they want on the curb at no charge. Trevor maintains that PAYT is essential. "Without that," he says, "I don’t know. I’m not optimistic [about increasing recycling]."

Warwick, however, has proven that some improvements, though less dramatic, are possible without PAYT. Under two environmentally conscious mayors, Lincoln Chafee and Scott Avedisian, Warwick achieved a 24 percent recycling rate. Unlike many communities, Warwick has a recycling coordinator and it recently unveiled new and cheaper collection methods designed to increase recycling. Residents will receive three large containers for trash, paper, and bottles and cans.

Starting in July, the containers will provide three times as much space for recyclables as the traditional blue and green bins, and residents will be limited to one 95-gallon trash container per week, says city sanitation recycling supervisor Christopher Benneduce. Because containers will be mechanically emptied, Dumpster-style, into the truck, rather than by a second man riding on the back of the trash packer, the automated system will also save the city money, Benneduce notes.

The supervisor credits Warwick’s success to the city’s recycling newsletter. Mailed to every resident three times per year, the newsletter continually reminds and educates citizens about recycling. And its effects are proven. For example, a front-page newsletter article about motor oil recycling immediately increased drop-offs at Warwick’s oil recycling center by 25 to 30 percent, Benneduce says.

Another step that would increase recycling, although the General Assembly hasn’t considered it seriously since 1986, is a bottle bill. Eleven states currently have bottle bills, says Patricia Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, including New York and every New England state except Rhode Island and New Hampshire. According to a January 2002 study conducted by Business and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling, the average American uses 650 beverage containers every year, Franklin says. In the deposit states, an average of 490 of these containers were recycled. In non-deposit states, only 191 were recycled, she says.

Although Resource Recovery has placed little emphasis on it recently, source-reduction can also ease the state’s trash load, according to Trevor. Refillable bottles and cloth napkins, for example, reduce waste through the reuse of items. Repairing, sharing, or renting items also lowers consumption of natural resources that are eventually buried in the landfill.

These ideas are among the ones being discussed by the state solid waste working group, which in January created subcommittees on source-reduction, municipal recycling, commercial recycling, market development, and the landfill. (Several members emphasized that finding a site for a new landfill is not a topic for the working group.)

It remains to be seen whether the political will exists to raise tipping fees, enforce mandatory recycling, endorse a deposit law, or enact other measures to reduce waste creation. Citizens can track the working group’s progress at www.state.ri.us/dem/programs/ombuds/outreach/integsw/index.htm. A final report is scheduled to be completed by February 2004.

Meanwhile, tons of potentially recyclable material continue to build up each day at the Central Landfill. As Resource Recovery’s Trevor says, "Something’s got to give at some point."