Recycling comes to St. Pete

We've had recycling here for about 20 years. At first you had to bring your stuff to collection bins, then it became house to house pickup, we had to pre-sort. Now they pick it up on garbage day, once a week in the summer, every two in the winter, no sorting needed. I generally have less than one bag of garbage and double that in recycle and yes, I use it. No extra charges...

We recycle in Toronto. We have to. Fines if we don't. Sorting into three categories - wet/dry/garbage.

Yeah,we had recycling in Ca for as long as I can remember, can’t believe it’s taken this city until recently to finally do it. Although in Ca we didn’t pay for it, it was free but for $35.00 a year and not having to separate everything is well worth it in my opinion.

I grew up in Vancouver where recycling has been in effect for eons. Problem was you only got a small blue bin, but at least you could use recycling bags. No limit to what they would take, recycling-wise, though there is a limit of one bag of garbage per household (you could buy stickers for more).

In Calgary, we just got city blue bins and black garbage bins - we pay $10+ month and they come every week. They're very large bins and you can throw all the recycling in together, and yes, I'm a big fan of recycling.

They're going to start a pilot project with compost, which I have always thought was a great idea. I already have a compost bin in my garden, but always have extra to donate, so I hope they introduce that.

They have recycling bins in all the malls and public buildings here, too - don't know about where you are, but it's an entrenched program now.

I was a serious recycler in Los Angeles and in Humboldt County. I don't do it here, such an unbelievably lame set up. They refuse a lot and require special plastic bags, not cheap. I still pay my $2.00 though.

But, time has passed, maybe recycling has improved here (slowly flows the Don, to quote a title).
Will check.

Thank God, I was the one that had to take the trash out every week!

They give us these big honkin' bins. We just throw all the recycling in there. It's free so far as I know (covered somewhere in our taxes of course). Very easy. Hell, it's easier than regular trash.

They just added composting to our recycling!

We have a bin that gets yard debris and food scraps (including bones, meat, dairy, pizza boxes, pasta, this gets picked up every week), a bin for trash (that gets picked up every two weeks), a dry recycling been for plastics, paper, cardboard, etc, (every week) and one for glass.

Albuquerque is soooo not Portland!
<wimpers>

I like the idea of the composting. Here in St. Pete there’s one very large trash bin that’s used for every four homes. It’s emptied twice a week and it’s full each time. Most of it is branches, yard clippings etc. It would be nice if they had a separate bin for all the debris.

NYC has had an almost full (glass, metals, plastics, and cardboard) recycling program since 2003. They had a recycling hiatus for a year in 2002 which put their previous recycling program on hold but I wasn't living in NYC at the time and I haven't any knowledge when that leg was initiated.

Yes and yes.

I was very glad when everyone was given 1 large recycle bin, the same size as the one for regular trash, and no more sorting.

yay.

We've had the yard debris thing for as long as I've lived here -- about 16 years. They've just recently added the food scrap portion to the composting. They then use the compost for parks and other public areas.

We also have a regional government agency called Metro. You can take paint (which they remix into basic colors and sell to the public for $5 a gallon), batteries, chemicals, etc. They dispose of things in a way that causes less problems.

Is it an optional program where you are, jcboy, or provided to every household (& paid for through your council rates, like here -in my part of Melbourne, Oz) ?

3 Bins provided to every household here: one for garbage, the second for recyclables (glass, paper & some plastics - only the recyclable varieties). These are collected weekly.

A third bin is provided for "green" matter ... tree prunings, grass cuttings, etc ... collected fortnightly. The material is mulched at a council depot & can be bought (at a very reasonable price) for locals to use in their gardens. But you'd need to collect it yourself, not a council service.

Once a year we have a "hard rubbish" collection .... we leave things like old television sets, furniture, computers etc out for collection ... but often they are "claimed" by astute folk well before collection day! A form of community recycling, I guess.

All of these programs have been in operation for ages.
The only bin I'd regularly fill is the "green" one ... I so wish I had a mulcher!
But I've gotten the recyclables down, which I'm very pleased about ... sometimes it takes 3 weeks to a month to fill it & put out for collection.

The way they do it in Olympia is that we get a huge bin for recycling, everything but glass, and then a garbage bin which is very small. You can upgrade to a bigger garbage but they charge through the nose for it. Recycling gets picked up every 2 weeks and glass every 4 weeks, but last I heard there is no market for glass ( they would need to pay a glass plant to take it) so it actually goes to the dump too, but I have not confirmed.

I pay for an "organic" as well, which I only use it for yard waste. Food goes down the disposal, which many Greeners here in town want to outlaw.

Well, in the meantime CA got 3 bins - black = regular garbage, blue = recycler, green = garden waste.

Here it is completely voluntary. They actually started months ago. I saw them at a booth at the farmers market downtown and signed up but never heard back, so I waited then finally called them, paid the $35.00 bucks over the phone and in two weeks they delivered the bins.

I really really want composting!

I think I might redouble my efforts there, I started to try to lobby for it but everyday busy-ness intervened and it kind of died on the vine. I think that would be GREAT though.

We have a pretty good program. No separating necessary, anything with a number within the recycling symbol on it is accepted (doesn't matter what the number is). Plus tin cans and glass and paper.

Then we separately have garbage pick-up (once/ week) and yard waste pick up. (Most but not all of the year, stops in the winter.)

They also do a special leaf run in the fall.

Pretty nice set-up. With composting too it'd be awesome.

My city in S Florida had to get tough with the illegal dumpers so they made trash pick-up and recycling mandatory by tacking on a surcharge to the property tax. Yay, no more monthly bills.

I do my own composting and I generally put out one bin of paper products and two of glass and plastic. They recently added styrofoam to the list.

All in all it's helped to clean up this burgh.