Delaware City Expanding Curbside Program

The city of Wilmington, Del. announced plans to expand its curbside program to reach the full city. Mayor James Baker said the curbside recycling program will go citywide, starting next month.

The mayor said the city’s six-month pilot recycling program, conducted in six geographic areas of Wilmington since June of 2006, indicates that residents of the city understand and appreciate the environmental and fiscal benefits of recycling and are ready to lead Delaware into a new era of trash disposal.

"I am extremely proud of the thousands of residents in the pilot recycling program who have produced a 35 percent diversion rate meaning that more than two million pounds of trash that we would have normally deposited in the landfill have been diverted to recycling," said Baker. "The 6,800 households that have been recycling since last summer have proven to me and many others who have been monitoring this effort that we are ready to recycle in Wilmington and will produce even better results with a citywide program."

The mayor said another 17,700 households will be added to the voluntary program during the months of March, April and May as recycling is introduced citywide for a total of 24,500 households. Wilmington’s program is managed by Public Works Commissioner Kash Srinivasan and Public Works Operations Director Al Ballard under a contractual arrangement with RecycleBank, a Philadelphia-based recycling company.

Mayor Baker said RecycleBank offers two unique and attractive features that contributed to the pilot’s success and convinced him that a citywide program will also be successful. The first is single-stream recycling, meaning that recyclable materials such as paper, plastic, glass, tin, and aluminum can be placed in one recycle bin without separating the materials. The second feature is a financial rewards program called RecycleBank Dollars that are credited to the RecycleBank accounts of individual households based on the amount of materials that are recycled. Citizens can earn as much as $35.00 a month that can be redeemed at any of the more than 100 area businesses that have signed up as RecycleBank partners.

At the current diversion rate of 35 percent, the city expects to spend no more than $150,000 more for Citywide recycling than the current $5 million that is budgeted per year for total trash removal. As the diversion rate approaches 50 percent, the city will ‘break-even’ and spend no more than it currently budgets for trash removal. Mayor Baker said because trash disposal is an ongoing required service and required expense, he would much prefer that the city spend its money with RecycleBank instead of paying to dispose of its trash in the Cherry Island Landfill.

Recyclable materials include newspaper, mixed paper, white paper envelopes, cardboard, junk mail, magazines, telephone books, cereal boxes, detergent containers, plastic containers #1 and #2, plastic milk containers, aluminum cans, steel cans, tin cans, empty aerosol cans, glass bottles and jars. More information about curbside recycling is available at the RecycleBank website at www.recyclebank.com.