Spokane moving toward single-source recycling

This fall, polished new Solid Waste trucks will maneuver the streets of Spokane, delivering a curbside offering to each resident and business. The object itself will not be particularly thrilling - a rolling lidded cart similar to your garbage can - but the convenience it will bring to daily life, and the environmental benefits it is expected to provide, are certainly celebration-worthy. The lidded carts will replace Spokane’s open blue recycling bins, and what is superior about the new containers are their undiscriminating guts – the carts will devour all recyclables, un-sorted and un-bundled, including items previously considered waste. This means milk cartons, juice boxes, all paper products (junk mail, envelopes, loose sheets), cereal boxes, beverage boxes, glass bottles, jars, and small scrap metal, including pots, pans, foil and pie tins. Starting Oct. 1, the materials collected will be taken to Waste Management’s new Spokane Material and Recycling Technology (SMART) Center, adjacent to the Waste to Energy Facility on Geiger Boulevard. When constructed, this 62,000-square foot “single-stream” facility will have the machinery and manpower to sort 26 tons of mixed recyclables per hour and 90,000-100,000 tons per year. After sorting, WM will sell the materials as commodities and give the city 75 percent of the net sales for the materials it brings in. In addition, 40-50 people will land permanent jobs within the facility, and according to WM, more than $46 million will be injected into the local economy during the first five years. Scott Windsor, director of City of Spokane Solid Waste Management, expects the convenience of a “single-stream” recycling system to increase participation by 50 percent. Of the 67,000 customers within city limits, he estimates that 50 percent of them currently recycle. Not making people sort their recyclables, he says, will increase Spokane’s participation to 75 percent. This may be a conservative estimate, seeing as Coeur d’Alene saw a 100 percent increase in residential participation when it rolled out its single-stream carts in October 2010, going from 27 percent participation to 54. Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene’s neighbor, is hoping for similar results after making the transition from sorting to single-stream last fall. The timing for Spokane, Windsor says, is perfect - his current trucks were overdue for replacement, Spokane’s population has grown to the level that can support a new facility, and Waste Management, Inc., was willing to invest. According WM municipal relations manager, Ken Gimpel, the company believes that there is more money in recycling than taking items to a landfill, and as such, was willing to build and operate the new SMART Center. Gimpel says WM “no longer sees waste as waste,” and is moving away from “collect and dispose” systems to “collect and convert.” The company is making major investments across the country in both traditional recycling infrastructure (like the SMART Center) and in new conversion technologies that transform “waste” into viable products, energy or fuel. WM intends to process materials from all over the region at Spokane’s SMART Center, namely Alberta Canada, Montana, Idaho, and Central Washington. Until Spokane makes the switch to single-stream, the Spokane Regional Solid Waste System plans to educate residents about the new program. For residents and businesses within city limits, the carts will arrive automatically free of charge and there will be no rate increases associated with the new system. The same goes for people living outside Spokane, but in densely populated areas of the County that have automatic curbside garbage and recycling. Those living in rural areas outside city limits, without automatic curbside pick-up, will need to request service. Windsor says he’s proud of Spokane’s progress in the arena of solid waste and believes that, “Once we get to single-stream, we’re probably going to have one of the best solid waste systems in at least the state, but it also will be as good as anything in the country – in terms of all the materials we’ll take.”