Taking out the trash

This post was written by OK Policy volunteer Zoraya Hightower. Zoraya completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Tulsa, and this fall she will begin a Master of Environmental Management program at Yale.

Trash is a surprisingly controversial topic. For decades, trash and how it is disposed of has been disputed in newspapers, community meetings, and classrooms across America. A widely quoted 1996 article by John Tierney, “Recycling is Garbage”, concludes:

Rinsing out tuna cans and tying up newspapers may make you feel virtuous, but recycling… may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.

A major argument against recycling is that it reproduces the labor and equipment utilized in a waste management program. Every route will need at least two collection services, one for landfill disposal and one for recycling, which requires twice the trucks, twice the emissions, and twice the manpower. However, the extraction and processing of new materials requires as many or more resources. Therefore, study after study has shown that natural resources tend to be conserved with recycling programs.

The accusation that recycling uses many human resources is true. Waste management tends to be labor intensive, and recycling adds sorting to the already labor-intensive collection. This translates into additional costs, but it also means local jobs. For the same amount of waste, recycling creates six jobs for every one job in landfill collection, and many of these pay wages above the national average. The Oklahoma Recycling Association credits recycling with creating 5,000 Oklahoma jobs, representing a $300 million payroll.

Evidence suggests the extra costs incurred by this increase in jobs does not make recycling less economical.  Beyond the well-recorded environmental benefits, recycling programs across the nation have proven to save money in the long run. With economies of scale, it should cost less to collect and sell recyclable materials than it costs to pay landfill disposal fees. According to columnist Cecil Adams: “If managed correctly, recycling programs should cost cities (and taxpayers) less than garbage disposal for any given equivalent of material.”

Is this true for Oklahoma?

Recycling is relatively expensive in our state.  We have the fourth cheapest landfill disposal rates in the nation. Oklahoma spent, on average, $22.22 per ton of waste in 2011, while Tulsa’s 2010 rates were $12.00 per ton, positioning both as contestants for the national low. We even have trash from surrounding states pouring into Oklahoma landfills. However, rates may eventually increase; landfill space tends to become more expensive as cheap land is used up and environmental regulations tighten. We would do well to put waste management systems in place now that are not dependent on these rates.

Oklahoma’s past…

Until recently, Tulsa had a subscription recycling service. Customers had to pay an additional $2 per month if they wanted curbside collection every other week. The service had no economic incentive for customers, yet more than 14,000 families were subscribed in 2010, representing 12 percent of eligible customers.

However, the relatively low number of participants made curbside recycling inefficient, because collection services may drive several streets with few or no stops. In Tulsa, each recycling truck drove over 120 miles per week with limited actual collections.

 Oklahoma City has a more accessible curbside program which offers weekly curbside pickup free of charge. Of Oklahoma City residences, just over half were subscribed in 2010, while about a fourth recycled weekly. Still, participation in Oklahoma City is low. Again this translates to inefficient collection miles.

Low participation rates give both recycling programs similar financial problems. Fixed costs, such as equipment, fuel, and driving time, are not offset by the tonnage dependent revenues. Once a city provides curbside recycling, its best interest is to divert as much waste as possible to sellable recycling.  But in terms of efficiency, Oklahoma has a long way to go. In 2011 both Oklahoma City and Tulsa diverted less than 10 percent of waste to recycling compared to the national average of 35 percent.

…and Oklahoma’s future

In October of 2012, Tulsa switched to a new curbside recycling system. Eligible residents received a 96 gallon recycling cart free of charge. Garbage bins come in three different sizes, and smaller sizes translate to a lower monthly payment. Before the switch, Tulsa peaked at fewer than 16,000 households.  By March of this year, Tulsa’s participation jumped to 110,000 households, a whopping 94 percent of residencies. Tulsa has seen continual weekly increase in tonnage recycled. This has allowed the disposal, sorting, and selling cycle to become increasingly efficient.

Tulsa’s residents have also become more efficient at recycling; in the first three months they delivered recyclable waste with around an 85 percent recovery rate. Over the next three months, more than 95 percent of received materials were recycled. In the past, Oklahoma recycling programs have been largely underutilized and inefficient.  As Tulsa’s residents and its waste management team become more knowledgeable, the recycling program will become increasingly efficient. As landfill disposal becomes increasingly expensive, Tulsa may serve as a good model for other Oklahoma municipalities.