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COMMENTARY
Tough decisions for D.C. recycling
(Published May 3, 2004)

By NEIL SELDMAN

Caught between a rock and a hard place, D.C. City Council is considering an array of contracts with Waste Management Inc. to assure recycling services. Meanwhile, the city gears up for city workers to
re-take permanent responsibility for recycling services for the 75,000 of the 110,000 households served by
the Department of Public Works.

The city is planning to:

• Extend the current contract with Waste Management for up to two years, allowing the city to implement its own program using city workers, trucks and carts to serve the 75,000 outer-ring households (homes served with
  "supercans").
• Expand the single-sort collection pilot program in Ward 7, which has been highly successful in increasing participation. Households on the pilot route were each provided a wheeled 32-gallon blue cart in which to place all recyclables, co-mingled. Trucks and carts are on order and worker recruitment plans in place for citywide implementation.

The issue of the remaining 35,000 households will be the subject of upcoming discussions between union and city officials. The city is prepared to contract out this service or use city workers for these routes in the inner ring of the city.

The city faces challenges, however. By switching to single-sort recycling, the city will save money through efficient collection and reduced worker injury, turnover and absenteeism. However, the city’s processing contractor, Eagle Recycling Inc., cannot handle the single-sort materials as it was designed for dual stream (paper separated from mixed glass, plastic, metal containers).

Arrangements must to be made to process the materials efficiently and get guaranteed contracts for paper materials. The paper industry in the United States is threatened because of the low quality of paper from single-sort
materials, mainly because of broken glass contamination. The result is that single-sort systems make Asia one of the only markets for this low-grade material. According to Susan Kinsella of the Environmental Paper Coalition and Fran McPoland, a paper industry spokeswoman, U.S. recycled paper plants are dying out.

"We are sending raw materials to other economies and cutting off jobs and profits in this country," says Kinsella.

Further, the city’s processor is being forced out of business. This local minority firm did not even bid on the city’s new five-year processing and marketing contract. As the only bidder, Waste Management will take its jobs and profits and tax base out of the city to its suburban processing centers. This will give the massive company a monopoly over processing of the District’s materials. When this occurred in other cities, like St. Paul and San Jose, prices for recycling and landfilling went up while the level of recycling went down. In response, both cities employed strategies to provide public and community-owned processing facilities to act as an escape valve from corporate monopolies.

The price in the new bid for processing the District’s recyclables is $99 per ton, which is
exceptionally high by U.S. standards. When New York City was bargaining to pay Waste Management $79 per ton for processing, a recycling firm countered the offer with a $5.15 per ton payment to the city. The city dropped Waste Management and signed on with the recycling company. Other cities pay from -$10 to +$10 per ton for processing. Revenues from sale of the materials may reduce the $99 price per ton for the city. But markets are volatile and the city cannot count on regular income.

One solution is for the city to continue working with Eagle Recycling for the next two years; perhaps adjusting its planned single-sort system into a hybrid system such as the one successfully implemented in Montgomery County, Md. The city should also consider developing its own processing facility; perhaps as a joint venture with Eagle Recycling. Either approach would keep the jobs and revenue in the city and give the city control over its
solid waste system – and its associated costs and benefits.

The new facility could be capitalized with investments from union pension trusts designed to maintain and expand union jobs. The city can repay the investment through a surcharge on the two million tons of garbage disposed of in the city. A 50-cent per ton surcharge would raise about $1 million annually for debt retirement and maintenance. The sale of materials could pay for in-school education and public awareness programs that the
city has yet to implement.

The city council will decide these issues over the next few months. Citizens should contact their city council members and the mayor to insist upon the city remaining self-reliant in its solid waste
management system.

The last decade demonstrates what happens when the city abdicates its responsibility for solid waste management. The loss of operating trash transfer stations in l985, due to 20 years of disinvestment, led to the trashing of the city by the large waste-hauling firms. Wards 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 were devastated by improperly sited and operated private transfer stations, which sprang up overnight in abandoned warehouses. These destroyed home values and brought vermin, noise and rattled foundations. Firms like Waste Management, Browning-Ferris Industries and others took advantage of the District’s legislative vacuum to harass the city and the neighborhoods while
pocketing millions for themselves.

It took 10 years of citizen activism, the focused and long-term commitment of Mayor Anthony A. Williams and Councilwoman Carol Schwartz and the blue- and white-collar workers of the Department of Public Works to bring the city’s solid waste system, with recycling, back to national respectability. The budget for the next few years guarantees that recycling will increase and waste will decrease while the city reduces its overall costs. Now we
need the fine-tuning of the system that will provide economic dividends and allow the city to reduce its environmental burden on the Earth for decades to come.

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Neil Seldman is president of the Washington-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. He serves on the D.C. Environmental Planning Commission and has been adviser to the mayor and Division of Solid Waste Management on transfer station policies and technologies.