Concerned Citizens

Thursday San Antonio took another step towards becoming a greener city by passing an ordinance that requires multi-family dwellings to provide recycling bins for residents to drop off recyclable items. In doing so, the city possibly can divert as much as 25,000-50,000 tons of waste annually from the landfills to recycling facilities. This would represent a very significant change in San Antonio’s waste management structure and help move the city towards a zero-waste objective for the city. But this ordinance not only allows people to do the right thing; it also starts educating people on what can be recycled and how to purchase recyclable items.

I’ve had recycling in my apartment building downtown for over a year. The program is pretty simple and requires me to pay $6 a month for doorstep pickup. I have a small bin I keep in the laundry room and drop off my plastics, paper and cans throughout the week. By Thursday (pickup day) I usually have 2/3 to 3/4 of the bin full and ready for pickup. Recycling has reduced my trash waste so much that I usually have to wait 2-3 weeks before I have enough trash to through out.

It’s also made me start thinking about the products I purchase and how recyclable they are. For example, my recycling company does not allow glass in the container. When I called to find out why they provided a very good reason. First, glass that is recycled usually doesn’t make it to the recycling facility intact enough to be recycled. Glass breaks and by the time it reaches the facility it’s usually so broken it can’t be sorted and processed. It also adds to the weight of material which is what the recycling center uses to charge for processing.

Finally, glass has probably the least value in the recycling stream and has the highest processing costs since it also has to be sorted by color. It actually costs the recycling provider more to take glass and creates no recycling value in the end. It usually ends up as trash. So I’ve become conscientious about not buying any glass products when I do my grocery shopping.

I’ve also changed some products such from shaving cream in a can which was difficult to recycle since it can’t be rinsed out to shave soap where the box and plastic container can be recycled completely. The shave soap residual is also more environmentally friendly and helps reduce sewage waste.

The bottom line is that by instituting recycling the consumer becomes a more educated person and begins to practice recycling all the time instead of situationally. It helps instill a new behavior as the consumer becomes aware of what is recyclable and what is not. That carries forward into other areas such as work and leisure. I’ve found myself looking for the recycling containers when I’m out and about.

Hopefully the program will become a success and help change the behavior of San Antonio residents. As I’ve always said, if you give people the opportunity to do the right thing they’ll do it as much as they can.