
Orange County Utilities was recently awarded the County Government Best Practices award from the Florida Counties Foundation during the Florida Association of Counties annual conference in Orlando, Florida. Orange County received the award for its Recycling Quality Improvement Program. The county was among seven counties honored, according to a news release.
The goal of the program was to increase the amount of material being processed at recycling facilities by removing plastic bags and other nonrecyclables from curbside recycling carts. The county's multiweek recycling improvement pilot, which consisted of tagging blue recycling carts at more than 640 households, began June 2018 and ended in August. Crews looked inside carts and left recycling feedback tags.
The program data showed “Great Job” tags issued increased from 31 percent to 53 percent of households. “Oops” tags decreased by 42 percent in the second half of the program. Other key findings include that most households do not set out recycling every week. On average, 60 percent of households set out recycling carts in a given week.
“Recycling right remains a top priority in Orange County,” says Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings. “We’re proud of this Orange County Utilities program that provides curbside feedback/tagging recycling carts in order to educate residents about the correct items to recycle.”
Launched this year, the awards program was designed for counties to submit programs for consideration that address specific needs within their communities. In total, 22 projects were submitted for consideration, with seven project submissions meeting the criteria set forth in the nomination form.
“The Best Practices award is a great way to highlight local initiatives and innovative solutions that counties are employing to increase efficiencies in service,” says Florida Counties Foundation Executive Director Eric Poole. It’s our goal to not only to honor this year’s winners but to also encourage a peer-to-peer exchange of ideas between all 67 counties.”
Orange County based its pilot off similar recycling tagging programs in Atlanta, Chicago and Massachusetts.
In June, Orange County began its search for a public-private partnership to develop and implement a new material recovery facility (MRF), with a goal to improve recycling infrastructure in one of the nation’s fastest growing counties. The county hopes to start a partnership with a recycling processor within the next year to provide single-stream, industrial, commercial and institutional (IC&I) recycling services to the county.
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