On the Ropes?

New York City is a high-profile example of cities that have been cutting materials from their recycling programs in an effort to balance their budgets. To many, it seems as if recycling has been targeted for trimming, but some cities have found ways to raise recycling’s profile and the community’s awareness.

“Without a doubt, recycling is under attack at the national level today,” Jonathan Burgel of R.W. Beck, Cincinnati, Ohio, told attendees of the National Recycling Coalition Annual Congress in Austin September 9. Burgel was among the speakers assembled to discuss the threats to municipal recycling programs around the country and to offer solutions.

Burgel and Darrel Pullard spoke about inefficiencies in Cincinnati’s recycling program. According to a study conducted by R. W. Beck, the Cincinnati program did not include communication among many key groups, such as drivers and maintenance crews. This lack of communication led to inefficient routing and imbalanced workloads. 

In addition to routing, the R.W. Beck study also examined the bulky waste collection, the task-based work system, and fleet maintenance. While R.W. Beck had many suggestions for improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of Cincinnati’s recycling program, the company concentrated its efforts on fleet maintenance, Burgel said, to meet the city’s desire for a quick fix.

Pullard said the company looked at the typical factors affecting fleet performance, such as fleet ownership, the number of maintenance technicians, the amount of communication between the maintenance staff and drivers, preventative maintenance, performance measurement and vehicle specifications. The company identified performance benchmarks, including reworking percentage of no greater than 3 percent; vehicle availability of 85 percent; and a 60 percent to 70 percent ratio of preventative maintenance to non-scheduled maintenance, Pullard said.

The Cincinnati program had too few spare trucks, poor model selection, and non-enforcement of pre- and post-trip inspection, according to Pullard. In addition, the city lacked a partnership attitude between the maintenance staff and the drivers, he said. The quick fix changes R. W. Beck proposed could save Cincinnati 30 percent in fleet management costs, Pullard said.

The topic then switched to raising recycling awareness among residents and elected officials, as David Robinson of the County of Philadelphia spoke.

Robinson said that his staff needed to raise the community’s level of awareness by bringing attention to recycling and elevating its position on the chain of political importance, keeping in mind that politics and economics come into play.

Marketing was key, Robinson said, and a research-driven, results-oriented firm was essential, as was establishing rewards for residents participating in the recycling program. In addition, penalties were sent for non-participation. For example, in less than a month, and after 300 tickets were issued for recycling violations, 33,000 residents phoned the city to request bins.

Robinson suggested that program directors should know their advocates and adversaries, build partnerships within the community, be adaptable and take advantage of the media.

Finally, Resa Dimino of the Grassroots Recycling Network, Bronx, N.Y., offered background on the residential recycling program cuts in New York City.

“A lack of creativity and original thinking lead to the problems we have today,” Dimino said, referring to the New York City Department of Sanitation.

The city had a diversion rate of 20 percent citywide, with rates ranging from 3 percent to 34 percent throughout the city. Residue rates ranged from 30 percent to 60 percent for the metal, glass and plastic stream.

According to the “Why Waste the Future Report,” the city could have cut $35 million immediately from the recycling budget through routing efficiencies and other operational changes, Dimino said. While City Council was receptive to the changes proposed in the report, the mayor was not, she said.

Dimino cited three primary reasons the recycling program was targeted by the budget cut: the huge $5 billion budget deficit; too much money routed to a poorly structured waste export plan, which inflated the budget by 64 percent; and poor program management.