posted by Mike Madison at 6:13 PM /
I've had questions and comments from time to time about recycling in Mt. Lebanon, most of them wondering about the restrictions and exclusions from curbside recycling. Wonder no longer (I hope). The following note appears in the current MTL magazine:
Cardboard, phone books, junk mail, magazines and newspapers will all be picked up as part of curbside recycling beginning next month.
The South Hills Area Council of Governments (SHACOG), of which Mt. Lebanon is a member, has awarded a new trash pickup contract to Waste Management, Inc., which will take effect in January. Under the terms of the contract, recycling will be handled by Green Star, an automated Neville Island facility that is equipped to handle single stream recycling. This means all of your recycling can be co-mingled in one container.
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Under the new contract, the municipality pays a fl at fee to the hauler, instead of a price per ton. Mt. Lebanon will pay $1.4 million a year for trash pickup and $288,000 a year for pickup of recyclables. This breaks down to about $138.84 annually per household for the two services.
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Beginning in January, the following materials will be collected by the recycling contractor: brown and green glass; aluminum, steel and bi-metal cans; plastics marked with numbers 1 through 7; copier paper, paperback books, colored paper, fi le folders, hardback books (minus the hard covers); mail inserts, business cards, shredded paper, catalogs, telephone books, poster board, greeting cards, newsprint, magazines and corrugated cardboard. Material can be placed into the recycling bins as-is, with the exception of corrugated cardboard boxes, which must be flattened and can be no more than three feet wide or long.
Recycling will be collected every other week. Inserted into this month’s issue is the trash and recycling collection schedule for 2009. Copies of the schedule are also available on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Mt. Lebanon Customer Service Center, located in the lobby of the Mt. Lebanon Municipal Building, 710 Washington Road.
Labels: recycling
7 Comments:
As a green advocate and blogger I am all for Single Stream Recycling because it increases both the number of households that recycle and total volume that is recycled. As a taxpayer, I am wondering why we will pay $362,455 more in 2009 for trash pickup and curbside recycling (over 2007 figures, I do not have 2008 actuals).
Going green is good but we should be able to go green without spending more green, right?
I'm personally looking forward to being able toss paper out in my recycling.
I wonder how many residents will actually go along with the changes though - I bet a lot of people won't be aware that the recycling has expanded to include paper this year.
To Schultz: Actually, the demand for recycled products has completely dropped off the map since this economic downturn began. Whereas towns used to get paid to have the stuff recycled, the opposite is now occurring. Check out this great report on PRI's Marketplace that aired on WDUQ a few nights ago. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/10/pm_recycling/
To Jake: Probably not many. For all of the money that Mt. Lebanon spends on its magazine, I would be surprised if 50% of the adult population actually reads it. A short article isn't going to spread the word.
And MTL magazine makes it just about as difficult as one can imagine to quote a piece of a story. Link to MTL? Forget about it!
Yes, I saw a story on that in the NYT, but The demand for just about everything has falling off of the map though, right? So why would anyone want recycled materials if production lines for just about every consumer good are moving at a snails pace, or not moving at all?
The market for recycled materials doesn't change the point I was trying to make. As I said earlier, in most cases single stream recycling leads to a significant increase in recycling volume (average around 30% increase). So if people are putting more stuff in the recycling bin instead the trash our trash volume should go down, right? I get that we have to pay more for recycling now, since single stream requires more work on either the collecting or the sorting end, or both, but ideally we would have negotiated a trash pickup contract where we would have either paid by the ton (we paid $1.2 million in '07 for 16,000 tons of refuse, working out to roughly $75 a ton) or we would have implemented Pay as you Throw (PAYT), which would mean that those who do not recycle and throw out more in the trash would have to start paying more for it.
In a time where our budget is being stretched to the max and programs and jobs have to be cut I think we should still consider implementing something like PAYT to offset the 27% increase in our recycling and trash pick up costs. Now that we will have single stream recycling at the curb there is no excuse for residents to no recycle most of what they typically throw in the trash.
I've lived in Mt. Lebanon for almost a year now and I love mostly everything about it. I do have to say that I'm completely confused about the recycling practices here. I've lived practically everywhere in Pittsburgh, but Mt. Lebanon is the only place where the recycling is picked up not only on random weeks but also random times. My neighbors also have no idea when the recycling will be picked up. I live on Florida ave. and I'm not the only one that has NO idea when the recycling trucks come. My neighbors and I will put our bins out in hopes of it being picked up, but sometimes it's not picked up at all, and sometimes it comes so late that we put our recycling back inside again because we assume that it's not coming. Today, the recycling truck came at 1pm! This is not only annoying but unsanitary because to me, recycling means that I have to have trash inside of my house in a closet until the recycling people come to get it. Can someone please tell me why the schedule is so messed up? I heard a rumor that it was supposed to be collected every other Tuesday, but so far this has not been correct. I'm tired of having milk cartons and cans and newspapers collecting inside of my apartment like a hoarder. Thanks, Ashley Larrow
Ashley, look in the MtL magazine that comes out in the beginning of the year and you'll see a paper schedule of when the recycling is. You can also see it online at http://www.mtlebanon.org/index.aspx?NID=258 (although 2011 hasn't been posted yet).
Recycling will always be on the same day as your trash pickup, Wednesday in your case. It comes every other week. For Florida Avenue, it came on 12/22, so the next time it'll come will be 1/5.
They use different trucks, so the trash may be picked up before the recycling or vice-versa. If it's not picked up by 1 PM, they may be running late or something. I wouldn't worry about it.
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