[GreenYes] Re: First Curbside Program

[Helen Spiegelman <hspie@no.address>]

I'msurprised no one has mentioned the "source separation" program 
introduced in 1894 by New York City Streets Commissioner George E. Waring. 
Read about Waring's program in Martin Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: 
Refuse, Reform and the Environment, Texas A&M Press, Chapter 2.

Melosi wrote:

"His most ambitious project was to devise a program for efficient 
collection of household and commercial wastes. "Source separation," which 
had been advocated for years but never attempted on a large scale, was 
attractive to him as an answer to New York's collection problem. The 
rationale for the system was that mixed refuse limited the options for 
disposal while separation of wastes at the source allowed the city to 
recover a portion of its costs of collection through the resale of some 
items and the reprocessing of others.... His plan for "primary separation" 
required each householder and business establishment to keep garbage 
(organic waste), rubbish, and ashes in separate containers until the 
department collected them. In 1896, Mayor Strong assigned forty policemen 
to the Street-Cleaning Department to explain the separation plan to every 
householder and businessman and ensure compliance with the new ordinance." 
(pp 69-70)

We flatter ourselves when we think our generation invented curbside 
recycling. That hubris can be forgiven (we are an overweeningly 
self-confident generation!). Less forgivable is not learning from history. 
Melosi noted that "Because of their complexities, [emphasis added] the 
utilization and disposal of refuse proved to be Waring's most difficult 
problems."

Waring learned from practical experience that curbside collection doesn't 
work efficiently for a "complex" mix of materials -- and consider that 
products and packaging comprised only 8% of waste then, compared to 75% 
now. So what did we do in the 1980s? Reinvent a program that didn't work. 
Today's municipal waste presents vastly greater "complexities" than the one 
that proved too difficult for Waring's source separation to handle.

Even Melosi, writing in 1981, included no discussion of the bottle bills 
that predated the new generation of curbside recycling by a decade. He 
didn't mention them because, of course, they are not part of the 
"municipal" waste system. The bottle bills required that beverage container 
packaging be managed through a reverse-distribution service provided by the 
beverage industry (sadly, pinning legal responsibility in many cases on the 
retailer rather than the brand-owner who designs the packaging) so they 
never become part of the municipal waste stream. Bottle bills, as we all 
know, get returns (of targeted containers) that are two to three times 
higher than curbside recycling. Coincidentally, it was the beverage 
industry that introduced voluntary bottle-return programs at just about the 
same time that Waring was training householders to "source separate" their 
trash.

Helen.








At 09:05 AM 11/16/2005, Brewer, Gretchen, NMENV wrote:

> There were 2 EPA pilots--Somerville, MA, and Marblehead, MA, done
> simultaneously or in close succession.  I thought the dates were 1972 or
> 1973, but I'm not sure about that.  EPA published studies on both, but
> don't know if those pubs are still in EPA archives.  I cc'd this to Mike
> Giurana at EPA, who is a wealth of information.  Possibly he can track
> this.
>
> Gretchen Brewer
> NM Environment Dept
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: GreenYes@no.address [mailto:GreenYes@no.address] On
> Behalf Of Dan De Grassi
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 9:33 AM
> To: Susan Kinsella; GreenYes List Serv
> Subject: [GreenYes] Re: First Curbside Program
>
>
>
> I thought it was Sommerville, Mass., under an EPA grant around 1970-1.
> Berekely started a year or so later.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: GreenYes@no.address [mailto:GreenYes@no.address] On
> Behalf Of Susan Kinsella
> Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 11:37 PM
> To: GreenYes List Serv
> Subject: [GreenYes] First Curbside Program
>
>
>
> Can anybody tell me which city started the first curbside recycling
> program in the U.S. and Canada? I've heard of several contenders for the
> honor. Probably there were several that started around the same time.
> But I wonder whether it's possible to point to one as the first.
>
> Thanks,
> Susan
>
> --
> Susan Kinsella
> Executive Director
> Conservatree
> San Francisco, CA
> Phone - 415/721-4230
> E-mail Fax - 509/756-6987
> E-mail - susan@no.address
> Websites - http://www.conservatree.org,
> http://www.paperlisteningstudy.org
>
>
>
>
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