‘No recycling, no trash pickup’ catches on

In early 2007, Sarah Kite, then the recycling coordinator in Smithfield, faced a stubborn problem. No matter what programs the town launched, the recycling rate remained stuck at 18 percent. Then the town’s trash hauler made an off-the-cuff remark during a meeting, suggesting the idea of refusing to pick up trash from homes that failed to recycle. Kite and town officials took the idea and ran with it.
Almost three years later the recycling rate in Smithfield has climbed to about 25 percent.
“You’re putting out your trash to the curb every week, why not pull out a [recycling] bin?” said Kite, now the director of recycling services at the R.I. Resource Recovery Corporation.
Besides being environmentally friendly, the program also saved Smithfield money. Why? Disposing of trash at the state’s central landfill in Johnston costs $32 a ton. And if the town exceeds its allocation at the landfill, it must pay $54 for each additional ton. Disposing recyclables? Free. Kite estimates Smithfield saved $50,000 in the first two years of the program in reduced landfill disposal costs.
Other communities quickly caught onto the idea. Cranston, Cumberland, East Providence, Lincoln, Providence and Tiverton have all instituted policies that require residents to put out recycling bins if they want their trash picked up. On Nov. 16, Coventry and North Smithfield will follow suit.
“We want to be able to have the bite when people say, ‘You didn’t pick up my trash,’ ” to tell them they didn’t put out their recycling, said Coventry Public Works Superintendent Dennis Smith.
Smith said the town estimates it will shave $20,000 off its roughly $709,000 disposal bill thanks to the program. It also hopes to tick its recycling rate up to 23 percent, from 20 percent. Providence, which started the program last week, hopes to shave $300,000 off its roughly $2 million bill for disposing its trash and to double its recycling rate to 20 percent, said Daisy Diaz, the city’s associate director of environmental services.
Granted, officials who implement the program often face a deluge of angry phone calls from people about garbage left uncollected on their front lawn. Last week, Diaz was out with crews to inform people of the new requirement and head off a situation like the one experienced in East Providence.
There, Recycling Coordinator Steven Mutter said the city received about 300 calls a week when it implemented the program in June 2008. But Mutter put his foot down, telling residents and elected officials that exceptions to the rule would dilute the program’s effectiveness.
Cranston, which implemented the concept last month, also received calls, some from people fuming that the city would not haul away their trash. Like Mutter, Director of Administration Robin Schutt expressed little sympathy, saying tough financial times meant the city had to find ways to reduce expenses. And in case people still don’t get the message, Cranston will soon hit repeat violators with a $50 fine.
“There are some people that are just resistant to the concept, but we try and explain [that] this is financial and environmental and even if you don’t usually care about the environment, you care about your pocketbook,” Schutt said.
Schutt said it was too early to tell how much the city will save because of the program, but already preliminary numbers show the recycling rate has climbed to 28 percent from 21 percent during the first four weeks of the program. In East Providence, the rate went from 20 to 24 percent. The cost of disposal fees also fell 10 percent, or $50,000, last fiscal year, but Mutter said some of that might have also stemmed from a down economy in which people produce less trash.
Still, Mutter and others find the program a simple way to help comply with a state law that requires every community to hit a 35 percent recycling rate by 2012. The “no bin, no pickup” concept costs communities virtually nothing to implement and nothing to maintain. And the programs do not force huge changes on residents. Residents do not need to take their trash to a special place or purchase special bags and, in most cases, can keep their existing containers. And they still roll, carry or drag them to the same curb.
“It’s hard for people to change their patterns and this is probably the least intrusive way of doing it” and still increase the recycling rate, Schutt said.
Before implementing the program, Cranston and East Providence both explored employing automated pickup trucks. The trucks use a robotic arm that reaches out, seizes a container and dumps the contents into the refuse truck. The trucks eliminate the need for personnel to jump off the truck and manually empty bins. The reduction in personnel, the theory goes, saves money.
But the bins and trucks do not come cheap. Mutter said in East Providence officials estimated it would cost $2 million just to buy the new containers, before deciding against it. Cranston was also dissuaded by high implementation costs and instead turned to the “no bin, no pick up” concept. •