Columbus City-Wide Curbside Recycling – News & Updates

[Disconnected]

False alarm. My wife saw a couple of bags laying near the dumpsters and thought they were the recycling i had put out this morning. When I got home, I noticed they were all gone, so I guess the original poster was right. the trash dumpster was blown over or something and a couple of trash bags were out. So everything is good and i feel a lot better about the recycling program. As for the trash bags,I am sure they probably dump the bags out into the machines.

[lifeliberty]

I would assume no plastic bags means just that. plus it’s waste of a plastic bag. call the number if you have questions. and they still have the recycling drop off locations if you have overflow or you can purchase a second blue bin.

[Patch]

Disconnected said:
I read on here a week or so ago that someone recommended placing overflow recycling into white kitchen trash bags and place it out by the curb with your blue bin since I have a TON more recycling than will fit in that small blue can. They said that they have been doing that for the last 6 months or so (can’t find the post ATM) and they said the recycling company picked them all up. Just had our first pickup (Linden Area)and none of the bags were picked up, but they did seem to dump the blue bin. Not much is going to get recycled if not enough of it fits in the Blue bins. Anyone else have different experiences, or a better plan for dealing with all the recycling over and above that which fits in the Blue container? I was excited that my garbage was only getting dumped every other day now with the amount of recycling I’ve started, but since they didn’t take it, I am rather disappointed.

You are right. Honestly, they should be picking it up every week to keep up.

I’ve been sneaking my recycling into my neighbors containers…

[News]

Columbus Recycling Program Considers Apartment/Condo Expansion
Published on February 27, 2013 3:00 pm
By: Walker Evans

The City of Columbus recently completed the five-phase rollout of the new residential curbside recycling program, and the team at RecyColumbus is ready to address one of the common questions brought up about the program.

READ MORE: https://www.columbusunderground.com/columbus-recycling-program-considers-apartmentcondo-expansion

[cadillackid]

cant you get a second container if needed? theres just 2 people living ion my house.. and we easily fill our blue bin to capacity in each 2 week period.. cant imagine what a family of 4 or 5 people does…

we are pretty avid about recycling everything that has a “triangle” printed on it.. maybe some people just thrown cans, or cardboard, etc and dont look for the symbol on everything…

-Christopher

[Stephen43215]

This is awesome news! I feel so left out on recycling day seeing all those blue bins out on the street!

[dbincbus]

I’ve been sneaking my recycling into my neighbors containers…

As somebody with a neighbor who constantly fills my container…

Grrr.

Wish the containers were larger, but it’s nice not to have to drive it to rape alley behind the school on Arcadia anymore.

[david161]

Having worked in the recycling industry in the past, and having study the pluses and minuses of the different ways to recycle, I can state with facts that curbside recycling is a waste of time and effort, and probably causes more harm to the environment than it helps. Think of all the pollution created by and the use of raw materials (fuel, tires, oil, etc.) by the trucks that visit every household in the city, and the metro area for that matter, every week or two. Also, citizens separate the recyclables from their trash and then it get mixed together when it goes into the recycling truck (does this make sense?), and unfortunately the systems used nationally to separate the different recyclables, use more energy and only recover about 50% of the recyclables that are delivered to the separation facility. We would be much better off with coordinated drop off sites throughout the metro area that are near where people shop and work. If we drop off our recyclables while going to work or running errands, then there is no waste of gas and the recycling trucks would only have to stop at a hundred or so sites. Then, individual trucks could be used to pick up each type of material: clear glass, mixed glass, aluminum, steel, paper, newsprint etc., thus removing the need for a large, expensive separation facility that also use large amounts of energy. Also some of the material that goes to the separation facility still ends up in the landfill. Curbside recycling is a government program that makes citizens fill good, but actually does little good. We need to look at the big picture when making decisions about how to help the environment.

[DavidF]

Except of course, we had drop off recycling and it was a massive failure.

[Alex Silbajoris]

Drop-off sites tend to turn into dumps when people leave anything. Mattresses and televisions don’t have recycle triangles, yet there they go.

Good point about the trucks woofing around, though.

Also, citizens separate the recyclables from their trash and then it get mixed together when it goes into the recycling truck (does this make sense?)

No. In my neighborhood at least the trash is collected by one truck, and the recycling by another truck, usually on another day.

When this house got the daily newspaper and I had all that paper to get rid of, I”d take it to a paper-only dumpster in front of a church. I crush my beverage cans and cash them in; a full yard waste bag of cans was worth $7 last time I went there.

[Walker Evans]

david161 said:
We would be much better off with coordinated drop off sites throughout the metro area that are near where people shop and work. If we drop off our recyclables while going to work or running errands, then there is no waste of gas and the recycling trucks would only have to stop at a hundred or so sites.

Sounds great in an ideal world, but how do you enforce anything close to a 100% participation rate with residents? I’d be surprised if our existing drop off system had a participation rate over 15%.

[DavidF]

Walker said:
Sounds great in an ideal world, but how do you enforce anything close to a 100% participation rate with residents? I’d be surprised if our existing drop off system had a participation rate over 15%.

I think participation was actually around 6% (and I’m suspicious that those numbers were padded to make the program look better by the city while they consistently avoided the issue of curbside recycling).

What would be ideal in a perfect world rarely survives interaction with reality. If it isn’t easy, most people simply won’t participate.

I can tell you from experience, there was nothing enjoyable or convenient about having to haul my trash in my own vehicle to a drop off point that generally wasn’t on my way to anywhere, only to find the drop off filled with all kinds of random trash.

[Walker Evans]

DavidF said:
I can tell you from experience, there was nothing enjoyable or convenient about having to haul my trash in my own vehicle to a drop off point that generally wasn’t on my way to anywhere, only to find the drop off filled with all kinds of random trash.

Yeah, that’s pretty annoying to see that sort of thing. We never minded dropping it off somewhere though, as the drop points were pretty convenient. We’re still actually using them even with curb-side service as we can easily fill our recycling bin in 2 weeks, especially now that we’re also bringing recycling home from the office to dispose of.

[Elizabeth Lessner]

You can purchase a second recycling cart for ~$40 and they’ll both be picked up on your normal pick up day:

http://publicservice.columbus.gov/recycle/

[roy]

‘Participation’ isn’t the measurement to use, it’s tons diverted from the landfill that makes a program worthwhile. In Columbus it is perfectly ok to throw aluminum in the trash and plenty of people do, the mayor has a lot of nerve calling out bars and restaurants for waste when the City denies curbside to condos and apartments.

It may make everyone feel better to add an extra fleet of exhaust-spewing trucks on the road collecting the blue bins but I want real numbers. Serious, enforceable diversion won’t exist here until there are major leadership changes at SWACO and its board of trustees.

[Author]

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