When Baltimore rejiggered its recycling program in January, officials promised the changes would save money and streamline operations, and city statistics indicate that they have accomplished that.
But the revamping also has sown confusion and frustration among many recyclers, prompting some to haul their old newspapers, cans and bottles to dumps, and others to simply give up.
"The original system was so perfect," said Jim Burger, a board member of the Keswick Improvement Association who still recycles. "It never occurred to me that someday someone could screw it up, but sure enough, they did."
When city officials announced the recycling changes, supporters exhaled. Mayor Martin O'Malley's administration, trying to find ways to cut the municipal budget, had backed off a threat to cancel the pickup of glass, metal and plastic.
Before the changes, some recyclables were collected every week, sometimes on the same day as regular trash. Now, recyclables are picked up during the second and fourth weeks of each month.
According to city officials, the revised program, which began Jan. 28, has proven successful. It is projected to cost $900,000 annually, half of what the program cost last year. It has freed up time for crews to clean up illegal dumping. And recycling has risen, from 3,312 tons from March through May last year to 3,572 tons during the same period this year.
"We feel we've got more people recycling than we've ever had," said Joseph A. Kolodziejski, head of the Bureau of Solid Waste.
However, for some residents, the changes have had the same effect as if the program had been eliminated. They have wound up hefting their recyclables to city dumps, rather than lugging them to curbs or alleys.
"When it gets to be too much and I can't remember the dates, I just come over," said Lisa B. Williams, after throwing away plastic bottles at a city yard near her Ashburton home last week. She was on the way to work when she stopped at the trash facility on Sisson Street, her second trip to the recycling center in four days. And confusion reigns, said Williams, other residents and many but not all community leaders in nearly two dozen recent interviews. Even avid recyclers say they're confused by the schedules.
"It's a real pain," said Barbara Ruland, an environmental activist from Ednor Gardens who helped organize the drop-off of recyclables at community recycling centers before the city began, in 1992, picking up the items curbside. "You just always have to be thinking about trash."
Many residents have cleared room on refrigerator doors for a new addition: the city calendar highlighting recycling pickup days. And a new kind of neighborhood watch has sprung up: looking out not for crime, but whether it's time to put out junk mail, water jugs and soda cans.
Katy Greene Davis of Fells Point stows her recycling calendar by the microwave, but even regular perusals of the twice-monthly pickup schedule leave her befuddled.
"This one is, like, every fourth whatever," she said, trying to explain the new system. "You know what? I don't even know what it is. I just have to keep checking my schedule."
To ease the transition, the city has sent emissaries to community meetings, mailed two to three copies of the wall calendars to each household, hand-delivered schedules to those who have called a hot line, and posted the pickup dates on its Web site and cable channel.
"Even though there are people still complaining, ... I think many citizens think this is an easier schedule than the previous schedule," said George L. Winfield, director of the city Department of Public Works. Confusion existed before the changes were implemented, he said: Some residents put out, say, paper when they should have put out plastic, metal and glass. City officials said the program's "growing pains" are over. Complaints and service calls have dropped far from their peak, according to statistics.
Recycling has long been a nettlesome issue for Baltimore, which caught flak for forgetting to bill the private company that was buying its paper for $200,000, then had to rebid the contract twice when that company quit the business. (The city has not collected the money, but it has found a new firm to pick up recyclables at better rates, officials said.) The most recent changes caused other problems: The city didn't notify many residents of the new pickup days. And it forced some residents to put recyclables on the street, instead of in the alleys where they have been putting trash.
Streetside pickup was greeted with about as much good will as the departure of the Baltimore Colts. Neighborhoods revolted, prompting the city to agree to retrieve recyclables from the alleys of many areas.
Leaders and residents of those communities say the furor has diminished and residents are happily recycling again.
But residents in other pockets of the city complain that they are still required to put their recyclables in front of their homes where the wind can whip them away, cluttering blocks.
Among the most peeved is Ashburton, where the community group has lobbied the neighborhood's councilwoman and the Department of Public Works to allow alley pickup.
"It's not appealing to see trash in front of my home three or four days a week," said Shawn Tarrant, president of the Ashburton Area Association, who stopped recycling because he can't figure out the schedule and doesn't want trash blowing around the street.
"I would like to recycle," he added. "I have children I'd like to set an example for. But due to the new system, I can't."
A DPW spokesman said the agency has received a request for rear pickup in Ashburton and is looking into it.
DPW Director Winfield said his department is trying to pick up recyclables in all the neighborhoods with alleys wide enough to accommodate recycling trucks. "Any neighborhood with an alley that large trucks can get into will get rear collection," he said. "It just has to do with the layout of the city." - The Baltimore Sun