Phase-In Of Strict Recycling Rules

After watching the city fall farther below its goal of recycling 60 percent of all solid waste, Seattle Public Utilities plans to expand existing programs, add a food waste collection program for businesses and ban paper from commercial waste and recyclable materials from residential garbage. It will also expand curbside recycling to all businesses.

Tim Croll, the department's community services director, said yesterday that the bans on paper from commercial garbage and on most existing recyclable materials from residential garbage will become mandatory in phases over the next several years.

Prodded by the City Council, Seattle Public Utilities is launching the program after seeing the city's overall recycling rate decline from 44.3 percent of solid waste in 1995 to 37.9 percent in 2001.

The biggest drop – and the biggest emphasis in the new effort – is in commercial recycling. It fell from 48.2 percent to 36.7 percent in the six-year period, due mainly to less recycling of corrugated paper, mixed paper and newspaper.

Residential recycling dropped slightly, from 48.9 percent to 48.5 percent, but single-family homes recycled at more than twice the rate of multi-family residences.

Croll said the department will educate residential garbage customers next year about the need to recycle such common items as paper, newsprint, glass bottles, and tin and aluminum cans. In 2005, it will start tagging waste containers of customers who aren't recycling properly.

In 2006, residential waste that isn't separated for recycling will be tagged – and won't be picked up.

Similar phase-in programs to enforce a ban on paper from commercial waste will begin for large businesses this year, for medium-sized businesses next year and for small businesses in 2005.

The city also will reintroduce a backyard food-waste composting program for residential customers, offering subsidized composting bins of a type that were made available in a pilot program in the mid-1990s.

Councilwoman Margaret Pageler, a leading advocate of recycling, welcomed the effort, saying an analysis by the city showed that "if you make recycling mandatory, there is a good opportunity to achieve our goals without a lot of expense."

The big increase in voluntary food-waste recycling will be at restaurants and other food service establishments. Croll estimated that the expanded program will cost only about $1 million a year and might require a garbage-rate increase of about 1.5 percent across the board. - Seattle Post-Intelligencer