At 10:01 AM 6/30/99 -0400, you wrote:
>While it's nice to see more money going to Habitat for Humanity, what
>about all the curbside recycling programs that are going to lose their
>major source of revenue?
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With all due respect, I must disagree. The beverage industry uses that very
argument to defeat bottle bills claiming that bottle bills remove the
valuable aluminum cans from curbside recycling programs. Yes, bottle bills,
dropoff centers and aluminum buy-back programs compete with curbside
recycling programs. But, if we are serious about maximizing recycling and
increasing recycling rates, we need to encourage any and all collection
infrastructures.
In bottle bills states the aluminum can recycling rate (on average) is above
80 percent. In non-bottle bill states the aluminum can recycling rate (on
average) is well under 50 percent. AND, a greater percentage of the
population in bottle bill states is served by curbside recycling (63%) than
in non-bottle bill states (46%).
And, a few words about aluminum can recycling. . . Generally, less than 20
percent of the aluminum beverage cans in the waste stream end up being
collected in a community curbside recycling program. There are several
reasons for this. 1) Aluminum cans have an intrinsic value and some folks
would rather get the value of the scrap aluminum or donate the cans to a
non-profit organization than put the cans in the blue box. 2) Many (if not
most) aluminum beverage cans are consumed away from home and have no hope of
being captured by the curbside program.
The aluminum industry's NEW advertising campaign isn't really NEW!! They
launched this campaign 18 months ago when they announced their voluntary
industry recycling rate goal (I applaud them for that) of 75 percent. I'm
not sure that this renewed effort will be any more successful than the one
that began in November 1997, but I wish them success.
Pat Franklin
At 10:01 AM 6/30/99 -0400, you wrote:
>While it's nice to see more money going to Habitat for Humanity, what
>about all the curbside recycling programs that are going to lose their
>major source of revenue? How about providing the collection incentive at
>a stage where it will also benefit the haulers -- with a condition that
>they can't just dump the rest of the truck.
>
>--
>Cindy Pollock Shea
>Contributing Editor
>Florida Sustainable Communities Center
>http://sustainable.state.fl.us
>
>
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