The right way to manage our trash

CAN Philadelphia reduce the city budget by reducing waste-management costs and still provide adequate waste collection and recycling?

The answer is yes . . . and no.

The good news: It can be done. Cities as large as Los Angeles have shown that a program that integrates the collection of trash, recyclables and organic material (food, lawn and garden waste) into one system can reduce the costs of collection as much as 20 percent while achieving recycling diversion rates as high as 50 percent.

The bad news: It can't be done as waste management is now handled in Philadelphia. Here, recycling is treated as an added service to trash collection rather than integrated in a more efficient collection system. To put it simply, we have six workers and two trucks picking up the same material formerly collected by three workers in one truck.

Mayor Nutter asked each department, including Streets, to come up with scenarios to cut their budget by 10, 20 and 30 percent. Cutting the sanitation budget by any amount without changing the way materials are collected is likely to destroy recycling and leave trash in the streets.

Philadelphia's Sanitation Division needs to collect more trash and recyclables using fewer trucks and fewer people in less time by adopting proven strategies that are well accepted in the solid-waste industry.

So how do we do more with less?

Adopt automated collection. Letting the truck lift and empty trash containers reduces lifting-related injuries and allows trash containers as large as 96 gallons.

In cities with automated collection, the reduced cost of worker injury alone has justified the change. In Philadelphia, this cost is assigned to a different department and isn't considered a regular cost of waste management.

Reduce crew size. Depending on the neighborhood, different systems can be used to cut crews.

Fully automated collection - where the truck picks up the container - needs just a crew of one. Semi-automated, where the worker moves the container to a hook on the truck, needs two workers. While three-man crews will be needed in some places, making reductions through attrition will dramatically reduce costs with no loss in service.

Establish fixed collection routes for each truck. Trucks are now assigned to an area and meander around until the job is done, a waste of time and money.

Institute curbside collection of food and yard waste. Forty percent of our waste is organic and can be handled by facilities built in Philadelphia. With landfill costs around $73 a ton, every ton of organic waste diverted to a composting facility will save money.

Adopt pay-as-you-throw. This allows unlimited recycling, charging a fee for each additional container beyond what is found to be average household volume. This rewards frugal residents and charges the wasteful.

Adopt RecycleBank or an equally effective incentive-based program. Municipalities that contract with the RecycleBank program that rewards recycling with discount coupons consistently reap 90 percent participation rates and eliminate the need for special enforcement or less-effective media promotion programs.

Provide waste collection for multi-resident and small commercial facilities and charge for it. The city can supply this service cheaper than private companies, but still charge more than it costs the city to provide, reducing business costs while providing revenue to the city.

To make progress, Mayor Nutter should fulfill his unfinished commitments to the Recycling Alliance's Five Point Agenda by hiring a talented and experienced recycling coordinator and waste- management consultants to produce a comprehensive plan.

These experts will bring new vision and best practices to the city. And the mayor and City Council should also adopt a new recycling ordinance to affirm Philadelphia's commitment to mandatory recycling.

THERE ARE FAR better things to spend taxpayer money on than trash.

Instituting these recommendations correctly will give us trash collection, recycling, composting and millions in annual savings.

Rather than throw away money on an outdated waste-management system, let's make budget decisions that reduce costs and support sustainable waste management in Philadelphia. *

Maurice M. Sampson II is president of Niche Recycling and Waste Reduction Systems, and chairman of the RecycleNOW campaign. He served as Philadelphia's first recycling coordinator under Mayor W. Wilson Goode.