Robyn Ross
Austin Chronicle
Original article here

In its past life, the steaming pile of compost at Organics “By Gosh” was jack-o’-lanterns and Christmas trees, pizza boxes and dried leaves. Coffee filters. Tree branches. Misshapen apples scorned at the grocery store. But inside the pile, where temperatures are as warm as 160 degrees, microorganisms are feeding on nitrogen- and carbon-rich organic matter and slow-cooking it into a rich, soft soil amendment that smells like the forest floor.

Standing atop the mountain of compost-in-progress, Phil Gosh surveys his decomposing empire. Beneath his feet, 10,000 cubic yards of what was once waste are being transformed into a substance that can restore nutrients to soil and mitigate the effects of drought. It takes about a year for the raw ingredients – 20,000 to 40,000 pounds a day of unsold produce from grocery stores, and branches and leaves from landscapers – to evolve. “It’s a beautiful thing that happens out there,” Gosh says as his rain boots sink into the spongy pile. “There’s no fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. It’s a beautiful ecosystem.”

According to the city, this is the type of setting where Austin’s veggie peels and food scraps should go – not the landfill. Currently, almost half of what Austin residences are putting in the trash is “organics” – food waste (nearly 26%), yard trimmings, paper, and wood. Such materials, when composted properly, turn into a textured, earthy substance that can be added to gardens or used as mulch. But when sealed inside a landfill, as it is now, the organic matter doesn’t return to earth, instead breaking down anaerobically and generating methane and other greenhouse gases.

Keeping organics out of the landfill is the next frontier for Austin Resource Recovery, which will this year propose to City Council a new residential collection program. On the route to Austin’s zero-waste goals – which call for diverting 90% of all materials from the landfill by 2040 – the city has stalled at just under 40%. Doing a better job of recycling is still important, but according to Director Bob Gedert’s calculations, the only way Austin can reach its benchmark goal of 75% diversion by 2020 is by taking organics out of the trash and composting them instead.

And collecting compostables separately is part of Gedert’s ultimate goal of cutting back on trash pickup and expanding recycling. Because recyclable materials have monetary value, some of which is returned to the city, picking up more recyclables can be more economical than picking up trash when commodity markets cooperate. Of course, that’s provided Austinites are actually putting recyclables in the blue bins. “If I can move trash service to biweekly and recycling to weekly, I completely cover my cost” for the switch, Gedert says. But there’s a catch: Before it will allow trash collection once every two weeks, the state requires that all “putrescibles” – material that decays and smells – be picked up separately and more frequently. Picking those up in a dedicated organics collection would facilitate Gedert’s route switch, reduce the space used in the landfill, and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Those are lofty goals for rotting veggies and soggy newspaper. “We joke that we’re making composting sexy,” says Dustin Fedako, CEO of the Compost Pedallers. “It’s a really cool process. Being able to make life out of the absence of life is, in a way, almost magical.”

It’s hard to argue with him. Given the right mix of organic material, moisture, and oxygen, beneficial microbes accelerate the decomposition process and produce heat in the compost pile, which also kills pathogens. Compost application improves soil structure, enhancing its ability to retain water and resist erosion – qualities sorely needed in drought-stricken Texas. Compost replenishes soil nutrients and facilitates their retention. EPA studies have shown that compost can even remediate soil contaminated by hazardous waste and filter stormwater runoff.

Growing Your Own

In the world of waste management, compost stands apart from trash and recycling. An individual can’t recycle on her own, and shouldn’t pile trash in her backyard, but can effectively compost her organics there. From a sustainability perspective, the best solution would be for everyone to compost at home and use the compost for backyard gardening, thereby eliminating the emissions from collection trucks and all associated costs. Many residents with the space and time do compost at home, or at community gardens, churches, or schools.

Savvy composters can also join the Compost Coalition, a network that connects small-scale organic material producers, like cafes, wood shops, and homebrewers, with people who can use the materials for home compost piles or chicken feed. Founder Heather-Nicole Hoffman says the coalition’s most successful program is Ground to Ground, in which coffee shops donate used coffee grounds that volunteers pick up. The grounds are a good gateway to composting, she says; they’re easy to collect from restaurants or break rooms, and they’re easy to put in home compost piles.

The coalition, which began about four years ago, exists both to support gardeners and to keep compostable materials out of the landfill. “It drives me crazy that something that is a resource is instead being turned into a problem,” Hoffman says.

But not everyone puts this effort into managing the backyard compost pile, which is why some piles smell or never produce actual compost. “A lot of people think that composting is just throwing your orange peels in your yard,” says Eric Goff, co-founder of the Compost Pedallers. Instead, “it’s like gardening, where you weed it and tend your garden, and then you harvest it and make sure all the plants are healthy. So it’s human labor and thoughtfulness applied to the natural process of decomposition, and not just tossing something outside.” Successful compost needs a mix of “greens” (like veggie scraps and grass) and “browns” (like leaves and wood chips), and it needs to be turned regularly so the organic material has access to oxygen. It needs some moisture, but not too much. Home and community garden compost piles generally can’t handle meat or bones, dairy, or compostable silverware, because the piles aren’t managed in a way that would elevate temperatures enough to break those materials down and kill bacteria.

And not everyone has the inclination or space to manage compost at home. That’s why Fedako and Goff started the Compost Pedallers in 2012. The bike-powered organics collection service transports veggie scraps, coffee grounds, and soiled paper from apartments, businesses and almost 600 houses to compost piles around Central Austin. Members, who pay a weekly fee of $4, put their organics – an average pickup is 8.5 pounds per week – in a 5-gallon green bin and set it out front on collection day. A Pedaller comes by on a cargo bike that can carry 500 to 1,000 pounds. He or she weighs the container, dumps it into the bin on the bike, and then cleans it with soap and water. When the Pedaller’s big compost containers are full – after about 50 houses – it’s time to drop the organics at a “CompHost” – e.g., an urban farm or a community, school, or backyard garden. A similar collection process is used at apartments and businesses like Dropbox and Livestrong, and restaurants such as Banger’s Sausage House. Since its inception, the Compost Pedallers have diverted 340,000 pounds from local landfills. Fedako says the process is pretty easy for the consumer: “It’s just putting your banana peels in our bin rather than the trash.” Members earn a point for every pound of materials they compost. The points are redeemable for rewards like coffee and food from local businesses, as well as bags of finished compost.

When the Compost Pedallers talk with prospective members, Fedako says, people often think the city already has a program in place. “People assume, ‘Austin’s a green city, I’ve heard about composting, so it must be right around the corner.'” Gedert often makes a similar point that Austin’s self-perception as “green” doesn’t always match up with the reality, and can actually facilitate a kind of complacence that’s at odds with environmental goals.

But changes are afoot. The city is planning to expand its collection service to include organic material, likely beginning within two years. When the service is established, single-family households currently served by the city will have three carts: a brown one for trash, a blue one for recycling, and a green one for organics including food waste, yard trimmings, and food-spoiled paper. The city already collects yard trimmings and leaves, mostly in plastic bins or lawn and leaf bags, and composts them at Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant. Switching to the green bin would establish “single-stream organics” collection, wherein all compostable matter could go in the same bin – much like single-stream recycling, where paper, plastic, and glass commingle. Elements of the proposed program are based on similar initiatives in San Francisco and Seattle. The latter city later this year will begin fining residents who don’t put organic matter in the green bin, though the Austin program doesn’t include such a measure.

Fighting the Yuck Factor

The city has already instituted single-stream organics at 14,000 households in a pilot program that began in January 2013. Ten geographic areas across the city have served as test sites for weekly curbside pickup and have generated a household average of 9.94 pounds per week, though Gedert’s data suggests this could stretch to 14.5 pounds. (The city collects yard waste, like grass clippings and leaves, that the Compost Pedallers do not.)

Gedert says residents are generally pleased with the program, but with caveats. For instance, the pilot has used 96-gallon carts, on the theory that the size was big enough for both kitchen waste and lawn and leaf waste. Austinites, though, are partial to putting yard trimmings in lawn and leaf bags, which has left the large carts only partially full. The proposed citywide program will employ 24-gallon bins and continue picking up bags of leaves set at the curb.

Another challenge is the way people shuttle organic materials from their kitchens to the big green bins. Putting vegetable scraps and meat bones directly into the bin is often perceived as too messy – Gedert says one of his biggest adversaries is “the yuck factor” – so residents typically bag their scraps before tossing them into the bin. ARR would prefer paper bags, which are compostable, for this purpose, but at first many residents were using plastic bags, which don’t break down. The department is currently researching compostable plastic bags to see if it can endorse a brand that will break down quickly. (Another solution is to put everything in bread or produce bags and freeze it. This approach eliminates odors, and pre-frozen balls are easier to toss into bins – sans bag – or community garden compost piles.)

Paper bags work for Chris Lippincott, a Crestview resident, who has been participating in the pilot for about a year. He uses lunch sacks to hold each day’s organics, starting with coffee grounds in the morning and ending up with dinner refuse, and tosses the bag in the bin every evening. “If you were to look in our green canister any given day, you’d see a pizza box or two and several paper bags that are full of banana peels and leftover fat from eating a steak,” he says, adding that his family’s trash can is much less full and that the kitchen trash never smells, now that the putrescibles are taken out each night.

The organic materials from the pilot program are hauled to Organics “By Gosh,” east of the SH 130 toll road, where they’re added to Phil Gosh’s compost piles. There, the importance of residents sorting materials correctly becomes evident. During a 15-minute climb of the pile, Gosh encounters a sock, shoe, Red Bull can, kitchen knife, and bong, none of which will compost. When residents use the green bin as another trash can, Organics “By Gosh” has to sort out the junk. By that point, even recyclable materials are so contaminated with dirt or food that recyclers can’t take them, and they end up in the landfill. “If people want to look at it as a resource and help our future,” Gosh says, “let’s keep it clean so we can make compost without having to spend a lot of time and money picking out trash.”

The 10 pilot neighborhoods are effectively the first phase of ARR’s organics collection rollout. In the proposal Gedert presented to the Zero Waste Advisory Commission at its April 8 meeting, citywide organics collection will be deployed over five years. Existing yard trimmings collection routes will be switched to single-stream organics routes (green bins) and phase in about 52,000 households a year until all 200,000-plus households served by the city are included in 2020. The proposal will be included in City Council budget discussions this summer; if it’s approved, ARR will begin planning and purchasing equipment in 2016.

The program would be paid for by an additional fee on residents’ utility bills, phased in over five years. Beginning in the 2016 fiscal year, residents would see an additional 48-cent charge. By 2020, the cumulative monthly charge would be $3.22. These fees would cover the costs of added staff, trucks, operations costs, and green carts, some of which would be financed. In upcoming meetings the Zero Waste Advis­ory Commission will determine whether residents could opt out of the program and the fee, by demonstrating that they compost at home or at a community garden, or by contracting with a service like Compost Pedallers.

Lippincott says a hypothetical $3 per month charge would be worth it. “When we consider the growth in the city,” he says, “anything we can do to reduce our landfill space, that is that sensibly priced, is a good deal from an environmental standpoint, but also from a business standpoint. We pay for those landfills, and if we can slow down the growth rate of that need and the expense associated with it, that makes tremendous sense.” Gedert’s projections show that if curbside organics collection is adopted, 79,000 tons of material per year would be diverted from the landfill by 2020. In the 2014 fiscal year, Austin Resource Recovery sent 27,357 tons of yard trimmings alone to the Hornsby Bend site; the leaves and grasses are mixed with treated sewage sludge to make Dillo Dirt. By collecting the other categories of organics – food waste (32,000 tons), food-spoiled paper (15,000 tons) and wood, the city would increase diversion by about 15%. Combined with aggressive increases in recycling, the program would lift Austin’s overall diversion rate to 75%.

“The question is whether a 15% jump in diversion to reach the goal is worth the additional $3.22 per month on the utility bill,” Gedert told the Zero Waste Advisory Commission at its April 8 meeting.

The Bigger Haul

As enormous a number as 79,000 tons is, that quantity represents only the anticipated collection from single-family residences the city serves – not commercial or multifamily buildings, which are served by private haulers. But even at structures where the city doesn’t collect waste, the city has a vested interest in reducing what that business sends to the landfill, in service of Austin’s zero-waste goals.

To that end, the Universal Recycling Ordinance, which requires that businesses, apartments, and condos offer recycling of materials like paper and plastic, includes a provision for businesses with food-service permits. Beginning with the largest businesses in October 2016, and phasing in more enterprises each year until 2018, the ordinance requires that operations with food-service permits create an organics diversion plan. This doesn’t require composting per se; restaurant and grocery owners are encouraged to follow the Environ­mental Protection Agency’s “Food Recovery Hierarchy,” which prioritizes getting edible food to people (see “Waste Not,” Feb. 20) or to animals (see “From Farm … To Farm,” p.26) over compost.

Gedert, who’s a fan of pilot programs, worked with the Greater Austin Restaurant Association to run a six-month pilot organics collection program in cooperation with 14 restaurants in 2012. “It confirmed that it can be done, but it also confirmed some of the concerns,” Gedert says. “One was pricing; one was the ability of the haulers to service on a frequent basis; and what’s it like in the middle of the summer?” Feedback from the pilot was taken into account as that phase of the URO was written, though Gedert says pricing is still an unknown.

Skeeter Miller, co-owner of the County Line restaurants and president of the Great­er Austin Restaurant Association, says he’s essentially on board with restaurant composting but concerned about the cost. The County Line donates excess edible food through Keep Austin Fed, but it does generate compostable rib bones, potato peels, and uneaten food scraped from customers’ plates. During the pilot, his restaurants produced about six cubic yards of material every two days. The Dumpsters holding it were heavy, and “yuck factor” oozed out in the summer.

As with each new recycling requirement, there is concern from the affected industry about added costs. Miller says the limited number of organics haulers means charges are higher than for a service like trash, where competitive bidding pushes prices down. He cites his own $5,000 start-up cost for the organics containers and an additional $5,000 per year for hauling costs. Like Lippincott’s household, his own restaurants have been able to reduce the volume in their trash containers by putting organics in a separate bin. But the collections costs are still a net increase, he says.

Not so for Wheatsville Food Co-op, which has been voluntarily composting since 2012 yet has seen its costs remain static. The stores donate edible food to the Blackland Community Development Corporation, and then the remainder goes into organics collection bins. Wheatsville collects both back-of-house material (kale stems in the deli kitchen) and front-of-house scraps (bread crusts from sandwiches eaten in the cafe). Chief Executive Grocer Dan Gillotte says the Guadalupe store has switched from five weekly trash pickups, using the largest Dumpster, to three or four pickups using the smallest Dumpster (the South Lamar store has composted since its 2013 opening). With the addition of composting and the reduction of trash pickup, the Guadalupe store spends about the same amount it did before composting – about $1,750 per month, Gillotte says.

The co-op’s biggest “public-facing win” has been labeling trash, recycling, and compost bins with pictures of items that go in each container, Gillotte says. Without them, customers get confused about what to do with takeout boxes or paper towels. “It takes a little training, but it was easier than we thought to make the transition,” he says. “Food waste is upsetting to people who really understand the issue, so if they can be aware that they’re diverting from the landfill and it’s going to compost, that’s good for staff to hear.”

The small steps, whether on the retail end (putting pictures on the different bins) or the consumer end (dropping banana peels in a compost bin instead of the trash), are ultimately what will move Austin closer to its benchmark of diverting 75% of waste from the landfill by 2020. As with recycling or any other zero-waste initiative, composting requires a combination of city infrastructure and individual motivation to work.

When the Compost Coalition’s Hoffman promotes composting at public events, she tries to engage that motivation with a before-and-after approach. “I like to show people, ‘This is your food, and this is your food three months later as compost,'” she says. “If you just see stinky, putrefying food, you’d think ‘Why would I ever do that?’ But if you can see it in a proper setting and managed correctly, it becomes soil. It smells good, it feels good, and it supports life.”

Katherine Driessen
Houston Chronicle
Original article here

The fate of the city’s cutting-edge “one bin” waste system that would feature a privately built, $100 million sorting facility is becoming increasingly uncertain, as sources familiar with the company proposals say there remain significant operational and financial concerns.

It’s no secret that the One Bin review has taken longer than expected. As a specially appointed advisory committee began meeting last summer, officials said they would send a recommendation to City Council by the end of the year. Last week, city spokeswoman Janice Evans said she could not assign “a specific time for a decision.”

With Mayor Annise Parker nearing the end of her final term, the timeline to select a bidder, garner approval from a skeptical City Council and begin construction on a system that has never been built on such a massive scale is becoming increasingly daunting.

“Certainly, the project won’t happen on my watch,” Parker said of getting the facility built. “We’ll either say ‘not quite there’ or here it is and here’s how you do it and let the next mayor carry it forward.”

It’s not clear precisely where the bidding process stands, but Evans said it has taken longer than expected only because the project is complicated.

Sources familiar with the proposals, who requested anonymity because of the bidding, said two proposals among the final five raise serious questions about how the technology would work and whether they could meet the city’s price requirement. The city has long pledged that One Bin would not cost more than current trash and recycling efforts. If the numbers didn’t add up to a cost-neutral figure for the city, other cities could use the One Bin template and see if they had the financing to make it work. The city snagged a coveted $1 million Bloomberg grant to come up with that blueprint in 2013, promising a revolutionary change to how the city handles the more than 600,000 tons of municipal waste that Houston residents generate each year, not including recycling.

“This cost-neutral, technological innovation is a paradigm shift, changing how people think about waste and recycling,” the city said in its Bloomberg application. “The concept of ‘trash’ will be extinct and replaced by an understanding that all discarded material has value and can be recycled.”

For Houstonians, who recycle just 6 percent of their waste and divert another 13 percent in yard clippings, a successful one-bin program would mark an incredible turnaround: The city has set an initial goal of diverting 55 percent of residential waste away from landfills, eventually increasing that to 75 percent. Houston’s recycling rate lags far behind the national rate of about 34 percent in most major metropolitan areas across the country.

Up-front sum

In order to make One Bin work without costing the city extra, officials outlined a public-private partnership model that hinges on a company agreeing to pay a huge up-front sum and assume most of the risk on the back-end.

The company would finance the $100 million, first-of-its-kind facility that would allow residents to mix their trash and recyclables in one bin, using advanced technology to sort and resell recovered materials.

A piece of that sales revenue along with processing fees, akin to tipping fees at a landfill, is supposed to help the company cover the expense of the ambitious undertaking and eventually turn a profit. The scale of the Houston project and the combination of new technologies required is unprecedented. It would be a dramatic success if it works, or a huge financial loss for the company if it fails. The failure of One Bin would also be a political and logistical nightmare for city officials. Though the city can guarantee only residential waste, the project would get a significant boost from added commercial streams.

But the two final bids raised significant unanswered questions about whether the plan could work, sources close to the process said.

The project likely would require a greater investment on the city’s end and possibly more stability in the recycling commodities market to match or beat the relatively cheap landfill fees in Houston.

Environmental critics who have pushed back on the proposal said the lapsed timeline is likely proof of what they have long argued: The technology simply isn’t there – and neither is the financing. Critics have encouraged the city to allow its still relatively young cursbide recycling program to mature.

“We’ve known the whole time that this was not a good idea,” said Melanie Scruggs, Houston program director for the Texas Campaign for the Environment. “So we hope, and it would make sense, that the delay means the city is coming around to the same idea that one bin is not the solution.”

But even as those close to the process have conceded the project is unlikely to be built, Sustainability Director Laura Spanjian has remained persistent about making One Bin work, sources said.

In late February, after years of residents lamenting not having recycling bins, the city rolled out its final wave of curbside recycling to single-family homes, a major milestone that even One Bin critics praised. But Spanjian was still touting One Bin.

“Doing all we can to increase HOU recycling,” she tweeted. “After this milestone onto more success, increased diversion w/ #1bin4all.”

Project ‘complexities’

The two bidders were selected from five finalists that ranged from small local companies to an established industry giant. A letter from the Attorney General’s Office to the Texas Campaign for the Environment denying a One Bin-related records request was copied to five companies: Republic Services, Mustang Renewable Power, Abengoa Bioenergy, WCA Waste Corporation and EcoHub-Houston.

“A delay leaves the impression that we’ve made a conscious decision to hold off the process,” Evans, the mayoral spokeswoman, said in an email. “That is not the case, the process to get to a decision is just taking longer due to the complexities of the project.”

Neena Satija
Texas Tribune | The New York Times
Original article here

HOUSTON — The McCarty Road Landfill is an unwelcome mountain in this flat city: The giant mound covered by sand and grass towers over the Settegast neighborhood of Houston.

“It’s the tallest man-made structure in this area, hands down,” Robert D. Bullard, the dean of the school of public affairs at Texas Southern University, said as he drove through the mostly low-income, minority neighborhood that surrounds the landfill. (The university is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.)

Little has changed in the three decades since Dr. Bullard completed a study showing that most of Houston’s waste facilities — landfills, incinerators and transfer stations — were located in predominantly minority neighborhoods. As the city considers a radical plan for boosting its dismally low recycling rate, which might put a new waste-sorting plant near an existing landfill, Dr. Bullard worries that legacy will continue.

“At what point do you stop dumping on communities that have already got five landfills and five incinerators,” he asked, “and stop using the argument that they’re already dirty?”

Houston’s “One Bin for All” proposal, which would let residents throw their trash and recycling into a single bin instead of separating them first, has been debated for months. Supporters, including some national climate change organizations, believe the plan could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and costs. They say it would cut truck traffic, because there would be no need for two pickups, and argue that sorting trash from recyclables at a centralized facility is more effective than relying on residents to do it themselves. Today, Houston recycles only 6 percent of the waste it collects, compared with the national average of 34.5 percent.

But detractors like the Sierra Club and paper and steel industry groups say it cannot be done cost effectively and represents an outdated approach to waste management. They say the city should focus on expanding its recycling service and charging a garbage fee, which it has never done.

More recently, critics have seized on another aspect of the plan: where the new sorting facility would be located. While the bids from several companies vying are sealed, city officials say it makes sense to locate the facility near an existing landfill. Dr. Bullard and others fear that the McCarty landfill, which is operated by a company that also submitted a bid for the “One Bin” project, could be a prime target.

Laura Spanjian, Houston’s director of sustainability, said the proposed sorting center would be nothing like a landfill. It would be more like an advanced manufacturing facility, she said, and while it would receive a fair amount of truck traffic, it could actually improve the quality of life for neighborhoods near existing landfills by diverting waste away from them.

“The less waste we put into these landfills, the better this is going to be for the neighborhoods,” Ms. Spanjian said.

City officials are quick to note that it has been decades since a new major landfill was established in Houston.

But for Dr. Bullard, who is joined in his opposition by the Houston chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., putting any waste-related facility in a predominantly minority neighborhood would feel like a slight. While community activists managed to get some landfills closed in those neighborhoods in the late 1960s and the 1970s, new facilities popped up to replace them, Dr. Bullard said.

He recalls an unsuccessful class-action lawsuit he joined in the late 1970s, after the city and a waste management company had established a landfill in a suburban, middle-class, mostly African-American neighborhood. Just a few years earlier, when the neighborhood was still mostly white, local officials had put a stop to it.

“It was too early and too soon to challenge something like this in a Southern town,” Dr. Bullard said of the suit.

Supporters of the recycling plan say the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and truck traffic is an environmental justice issue, because climate change and air pollution can disproportionately affect poor and minority communities.

When there are separate collections for trash and recyclables, “we run two separate sets of trucks, two crews, two sets of canisters,” said Craig Benson, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who approves of the single-bin strategy. He added, “If we can reduce that to a single stream, that’s a real advantage.”

Melanie Scruggs
Off the Kuff | Chron.com blog

Original article here

Note: From time to time, I solicit guest posts from various individuals on different topics. While I like to think I know a little something about a lot of things, I’m fortunate to be acquainted with a number of people who know a whole lot about certain topics, and who are willing to share some of that knowledge here.

Houston has significantly improved its recycling rate by expanding single-stream recycling, or the “big, green bins.” While the smaller, 18-gallon green boxes only had a participation rate of 22%, the larger recycling bins are up to 62% recycling participation since the larger bins are a better, more convenient design and they accept more materials.

Following successful models of cities like Denver, Los Angeles, Toronto, Dallas and Austin, Houston can improve its recycling rate beyond our current 6% or next year’s expected 12% by implementing education programs and incentives.

It all starts with consistent programs and education

First and foremost, all homes serviced by the City’s waste services need to have the same, consistent recycling program. Right now, some neighborhoods have dual stream while others have single-stream; some neighborhoods recycle glass separately and others do not. Inconsistent recycling services unnecessarily complicates City-wide public education and messaging, makes it more difficult to teach communities how to recycle and can cause people to give up on recycling properly. Consistent, single-stream recycling where all recyclables go in one container separate from trash really does simplify the process.

Next, we need consistent promotion and education to explain what items go in the recycling bins. Recycling messages may take a plethora of forms: bus signs, billboards, bill inserts, social media, speaking in neighborhood meetings and even in schools. Speaking to elementary school students is one of the most effective recycling education methods, since kids are great at teaching their parents how to recycle. This is especially true in multi-lingual homes or in homes where parents have not recycled previously. Teaching youngsters responsible, environmentally conscious behaviors such as recycling will hopefully also encourage them to be sensitive to the environment throughout their lives and future careers.

Broadly speaking, recycling media and messaging should be tailored to reach populations with different interests and values. Environmentalists are going to be compelled when you say it is good for the environment, but that’s not everybody—maybe not even most people in Houston. The City may explain how recycling creates jobs, saves tax dollars in the long run and teaches resource conservation to connect with one group; explaining how recycling means less dumping on environmental justice communities connects to another. We live in an era where mass communication can be tailored to very specific audiences. Goodness knows I saw Mayor Annise Parker’s campaign ads all over my internet; surely the City can promote recycling that effectively.

At the individual or neighborhood level, stickers on recycling bins and door-to-door communication have been proven highly effective in cities like San Francisco, where they divert 80% of waste from landfills. Some cities have also appointed neighborhood “block leaders” where neighbors encourage each other to recycle properly and help distribute recycling instructions and media. Council member Bradford once suggested that the City create some kind of recycling competition between neighborhoods and invent rewards for neighborhoods that recycle the most.

Door-to-door visits may also target areas with low recycling participation or high contamination. City employees may use stickers and notes on recycling bins to inform people what they are doing right or what needs improvement. Door-to-door visitors are very effective since they can take some time to explain what items are recyclable in the City’s recycling program, what isn’t, why it is important and make sure residents understand the incentives in place.

Incentives help to improve recycling rates

All waste services have a cost, but not all communities have waste fees or a designated monthly charge to fund trash, compost and recycling services. Some cities pay for waste disposal from general funds and are able to achieve high recycling rates through consistence services and promotion. Toronto, for example, has no waste fee and boasts 49% diversion from landfills—about 3 times that of Houston. Part of Toronto’s success is likely due to their curbside food waste collection and a commitment to strong education programs. Monthly charge-based incentives do create powerful economic incentives to increase recycling, however, and have proven successful in other cities.

Unit-based or “SMaRT (Save Money and Reduce Trash)” pricing allows customers to pay less if they recycle more. While some communities may determine the amount through metering, where each load of trash set out at the curb is weighed, this is unnecessary and often unpopular. An easier solution is to offer different sized trash cans—24 gallon, 36 gallon, 64 gallon and 96 gallon—and to charge customers more for bigger cans, incentivizing waste reduction as well as recycling. In general unit-based pricing can reduce waste disposal by up to 50% and increase recycling by up to 40%. EPA estimates that PAYT policies in 2006—which covered only 25% of the US population—diverted about 6.5 million tons of waste which would have otherwise been thrown away. They estimated then that the policies reduced disposal by an average of 17%.

Mandatory curbside recycling and composting programs are controversial, but they are also very effective at incentivizing participation. Essentially these are ordinances which say that the City will not collect any waste if either recycling or composting are not also present, or if there is recycling or composting present in the waste. Customers are still free to self-haul their discards to a landfill and pay gate fees there, but City collection crews will not throw valuable commodities into the landfill themselves. Such policies are best implemented after all other incentives, education and programs have gone into effect to capture the last chunks of material after recycling, composting and other programs have become widely accepted.

Creating a City Wide Recycling Culture

Promoting recycling not just at home for homeowners, but also at apartments, condos, businesses, events and public spaces contributes to an overall recycling culture. If people don’t have recycling available until they move into a house, they are less accustomed to recycling and participation tends to be low. Consistent recycling programs at businesses, public spaces, tax-exempt institutions and schools also maximize potential job creation, revenue and conservation for the City.

Plenty of businesses take on voluntary recycling services or are interested in reducing waste in order to increase efficiencies and lower costs. Boeing and Mitsubishi for example have committed to Zero Waste to landfills and this is a growing trend in the business community. Voluntary efforts are important to lead the recycling culture, and recycling ordinances are also key to long term improvements in recycling outside of the City’s residential service area.

Note that some homeowner associations that have opted out of City waste services and in exchange for a refund or sponsorship program for private waste contracts. Houston could pass an ordinance requiring recycling in these opt-out neighborhoods or make it a condition of the grant that these neighborhoods have to provide single-stream recycling similar to what the City provides its customers.

Other aspects of a recycling culture include recruiting recycling-reliant industries, re-use centers, swap shops and salvage from bulky trash collection. Austin just started a promotional program to support local businesses that sell recycled products. Recycling is good for the environment and creates tens of thousands of jobs in our region; we should support manufacturers that use recycled content or re-use materials. Publicly committing to supporting the recycling industry will increase overall buy-in to recycling programs at home, work and play.

In addition to recycling and compost, cities with a recycling culture are advocating for better product design. There is a nationally coordinated effort around container packaging, for instance, to eliminate non-recyclable packaging designs for certain products. Since our tax dollars pay for recycling and waste programs that dispose of millions of dollars’ worth of packaging every year, it makes sense that we should advocate for design that would lower the cost of recycling and disposal. This policy framework is called “extended producer responsibility” and aims to create economic incentives for producers to improve product design to achieve longer lifespans with greater durability and safety.

Long-term Zero Waste Goal

The big picture, long-term goal—90% diversion from landfills or higher—is often called Zero Waste. The Zero Waste International Alliance has developed the only peer-reviewed definition for the term:

Zero Waste is a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use.

Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them.

Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water or air that are a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.

Note that this definition specifically excludes phased incineration technologies such as gasification, which has been proposed for the City of Houston’s “One bin for All” proposal. In practice, local and commercial Zero Waste standards vary with 90% diversion or higher being a common goal. Both Dallas and Austin have Zero Waste goals, and San Antonio has a short-term goal to divert 60% of its waste by 2020.

Recycling, composting, and waste reduction are all higher and better uses for these materials than incineration according to the EPA. Unlike unproven technologies like gasification of solid waste, Zero Waste relies on proven technologies such as separate recycling and organics collection. We hope that as soon as the City abandons its inkling toward gasifying our trash, we will see real leadership in establishing education programs and incentives to increase participation in the “big, green bins” recycling program, which is already showing success and fostering a culture of responsibility, unlike “One bin for all,” which fosters a culture of waste. Houston’s low recycling rate is a sign of opportunities we have yet to explore and provide to all residents. We believe the right services and education programs will yield successful results just like they have in other Cities, and set a positive example for other communities to follow.

Melanie Scruggs is the Houston Program Director for Texas Campaign for the Environment, a statewide, grassroots advocacy organization for waste and recycling issues. Melanie graduated from the Plan II Honors program at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012.