Yesterday I wrongfully maligned the streets department! Since its student move out and I live downtown I was looking forward to getting rid of a mountain of cardboard in my basement, and I was dismayed when I wrongfully thought the city was just throwing my hard work into the garbage. I was wrong and here’s a GREAT explanation if you are wondering about the state of recycling in the city! It’s actually good news. (Right, so half of stopped reading, right?)
MY FACEBOOK POST
I always think the blue trucks are recycling and the brown trucks are trash. I guess that is no longer true. My initial post said “I can’t believe I spent all that time breaking down my recycling and they threw it in the trash! Ironically moments before the garbage truck took my recycling the recycling truck took my neighbors garbage!” I was wrong!!!! You can see my corrected post here.
EMAIL TO THE CITY
So, first, thank you. I live downtown and today, my recycling got picked up three times. For once there is an advantage to living downtown! I finally cleared out years worth of cardboard taking up space in my basement!!!! Embarrassing but true. I threw away 4 computer boxes, only one of the computers is still in use! Side note: I also recently just got a bigger recycling bin so this doesn’t happen again!
Second, I’m just so curious. I noticed a blue truck going by and picking up the brown (garbage cans) on the other side of the street. Then, a brown truck came and picked up my recycling. The first time I swear it looked like there was just garbage in the truck. The second time, the same brown truck came by and picked up my recycling (many hours later) – this time it looked like a bunch of magazines and papers in the truck. The third time there was actually a blue truck that came and took my recycling and not my garbage. (By the third round I had filled up my garbage too!)
So, did my recycling get recycled? Or was it tossed in the trash? You can see from my facebook post people have lots of theories about this. Including:
– Some regular trucks pick up recycling
– There is no market and it ends up in the landfill anyways
– My cart was too full (the first time) so they assumed I wasn’t following the rules (tho it was clear it was just full of clean cardboard)
– Some trucks can pick up both
Etc, etc, etc.
Thanks all for you time! Inquiring minds truly do want to know!
RESPONSE
Hi, Brenda
Here’s what happened today.
The brown, rear-loading truck in the photos on your Facebook page appears to be 4597. That truck was assigned to collect recycling today in the student move areas, so they would have mostly been emptying carts, but probably grabbing any bags of excess recyclables people placed outside of their carts as well. Your photos appear to show 4597 both times the brown truck photographed (the initial photos that kicked off the post and then the photos later on in the comments).
The blue truck in the Facebook thread was 4455, which was also assigned to collect the recycling carts. They were to grab the recycling carts on the regularly scheduled Tuesday collection route for the day.
Now there were other brown trucks and blue trucks circling through the neighborhoods today grabbing the trash & recyclables as well. The truck you saw grabbing the tan trash cart would have been a different truck.
Outside of the trucks having different fleet numbers, there’s really no distinguishing between the trash and recycling trucks. What I mean is that our recycling trucks do not have a large recycling emblem on the door, or something else along those lines, so I think it would be easy mix up the trucks. Especially on a day like today in the student move area where there are quite a few trucks circling through. For just the east side streets division (which services your home) we had out 7 of the brown-rear loading trucks in the general vicinity of your home picking up carts and items related to the move out. And you likely would have seen at least two blue trucks in the area as well picking up their regular routes (one grabbing the trash and one grabbing the recycling).
The recyclables that we collected today, and every day, are taken to Pellitteri for sorting and recycling.
Where the theories and speculation come from are the abundance of news stories you can find that talk about the troubles in recycling right now. They’re pretty easy to find –the Daily Show did something on recycling. Even the Weather Channel had a story about recycling.
First, we need to understand that recycling is regional. True, recyclables are a global commodity. But the laws governing recycling and the opportunities to move/sell/process the materials all depend on where you live – so all of the particular recycling rules about what can, or should, or can’t be recycled vary by region.
Now, all of the articles I’ve read or seen about the recycling troubles all seem to miss or undersell the point that there’s some variety in the outcomes related to the recycling troubles we’re in now (even The Daily Show got that wrong). While places in Arizona or wherever may be landfilling their recyclables – that’s not true everywhere. And it’s not true here.
In Madison, we have city, county, and state laws that prevent recyclables from going to the landfill. We are not, and Pellitteri is not, putting bales of cardboard or other recyclables into the landfill because there’s no market for them.
Now, what all of the articles get right is that the market is bad. That seems to be uniformly true across the United States. Most of the recyclables we place in the cart right now are not generating revenue. Pellitteri is warehousing some, hoping for the market to rebound, and others are going to market a fraction of what they were worth before. The import restrictions put in place by China created more domestic supply than demand, therefore, the prices have dropped. Now there is reinvestment happening in the United States with new paper mills and other processors, these take a long time to come online, so the troubles are likely to linger.
So, what do we do?
Keep recycling and do it right. So, basically, the advice hasn’t changed even from the halcyon George Dreckmann days of recycling. The fewer the contaminants, the cleaner the material, the easier it is to move on the market.
If you have any other questions, let me know.
Bryan Johnson
City of Madison Streets Division
Recycling Coordinator/Public Information Officer
Office: 608-267-2626
BJohnson2@cityofmadison.com
ADDITONAL INFORMATION
Here is a video that Pellitteri has made about what it takes to recycle properly
If you have other questions they have a lot of information on the city website.
And, as you can see, Bryan is great at answering questions if you have more!
