Big D Makes Changes to Recycling Program

The city of Dallas City Council has approved changes to the city’s curbside and alley recycling program which, the city feels, will help sharply increase the recovery rate of recyclables in the city. The City Council unanimously approved the changes at a meeting Oct. 11. The revamped program will begin Jan. 2, 2007.

The changes to the program will include moving the recyclables collection from once a week to bi-weekly. The city also will be offering 96-gallon containers which residents can use instead of the 30 gallon blue bags residents presently use. Toter was awarded the contract to provide the collection containers.

Cherita Johnson, assistant director of the Dallas’ Sanitation Services, says that by offering the containers to residents they expect to see a sharp increase in the recovery rate throughout the city. In a pilot test conducted by the city in 2004-2005 recovery rates and recyclables collected increased, while the overall amount of material being disposed of decreased.

The city r expects to see a similar increase in the amount of recyclables being collected with the 96-gallon containers.

The city also feels that the wide range of materials it will be collecting in the single-stream collection program will help boost overall recovery levels. Johnson notes that the city will be collecting six different grades of plastic - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7; mixed paper, OCC, UBCs and steel and metal containers, ONP and glass.

In addition to switching to using the larger containers and going to a bi-weekly collection program the newly revamped program will go from using a private contractor for the program to one handled by the city Sanitation Department. According to press reports the city feels that using city Sanitation employs should provide more efficient services.

The material collected will be processed and marketed by Vista Fibers. Dallas will take part in a revenue sharing program with Vista.

The containers are expected to be delivered to households requesting them over the last two months of the year.

The revamped program is expected to cost slightly more than $4 million through the 2006-2007 fiscal year. Along with the containers, Johnson says that the city will be investing time and money to increase the educational aspect o the program.