an article about a pilot program, or a test, of what people throw
away in their garbage, versus what they recycle, in a part of the
Seward neighborhood. They are going through people's refuse item by
item to see what, exactly, is being thrown away.
(And YOU thought it was only the FBI that was interested in going
through your garbage cans!)
Evidently Hennepin County wants Minneapolis to go to the dual-cycle
recycling system the county uses, which is to dump all our
recyclables together in one or more mixed bin(s), which then have to
be hand-separated before anyone can use (sell) the stuff.
Minneapolis, as we all know, requires that we do the separation
process at the source: we have to put newsprint and cardboard here,
office paper there, aluminum/steel over there, and glass and plastic
off by themselves, too.
Minneapolis's Director of solid waste, Susan Young, has been quoted
as saying that dual-cycle recycling is easier for the consumer, who
just dumps willy-nilly and therefore may dump more, the percentage of
total refuse recycled may go up. Minneapolis's current system is
much cheaper, because it does not need that hand-separating. A little
bit more work up front by us at our homes, lots less work and lots
less expense at the city level, and thus to us in the fees we pay to
the city and county.
My questions are these:
Is there any other reason to do dual-cycle than Hennepin County's
insistence that it's easier, and therefore will generate more
recycled items?
How will we measure "success" in dual-cycle recycling in Minneapolis
if we go that way--reduced volume of garbage? morre weight in
recyclables? What is the threshold for "success"?
Given the hugely greater expense, to the consumer/recycler/feepayer,
of dual-cycle, will those of us who separate our recycling materials
face a hugely larger recycling fee because other people can't be
bothered to separate fiber products from metals, glass, and plastics?
Connie Sullivan
Como, in Southeast Minneapolis