in Northeast Philly
By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer
A year after the Department of Streets’ Everything Goes! program debuted in the Northeast, officials continue to commend its role in ending residents’ separation anxiety over recycling.
Now able to toss their recyclable materials into one 20-ounce bin instead of separating them, many of the 123,000 residents targeted by the program have responded by lining their curbs with overflowing amounts of metal, plastics and paper every other week.
The result: a 33 percent increase in recycling tonnage between last July and April.
The streets department sees the rising numbers as a stamp of success for the "single-stream" program, which came to the area on July 10 and emerged in West and Southwest Philadelphia in March.
"Our original estimate was a twenty-five-percent increase in tonnage," said Joan Hicken, the city’s recycling coordinator. "We’ve exceeded our expectations. We’re really pleased that they’ve embraced this new system. It seems to have given the program a jolt."
But while the streets department sees the program as sailing a smooth course toward a higher citywide recycling rate — it currently hovers at around 7 percent when the national average is 27 percent — some say the city’s approach to recycling remains flawed. That camp wants weekly, not bi-weekly, collections, single-stream citywide, less procedural perplexity and some incentive for recycling.
"The program is confusing for the older people," said Nancy Hampson, who heads the Oxford Circle Civic Association. "It doesn’t fit for their needs. Someone needs to find a better solution."
Streets department representatives this time last year scoured community meetings and knocked on thousands of doors to get residents hip to single-stream recycling.
The program gave all Northeast residents except those living east of Roosevelt Boulevard and south of Cheltenham Avenue the green light to put all recyclable materials in the same bin. In addition, cardboard and plastic joined the list of eligible recyclable items.
Residents previously adhered to the dual-stream system, still in existence in many parts of the city, by which they separated out their paper materials by tying them with string or placing them in paper bags.
The streets department believed the Northeast was a good place to test Everything Goes! since the area’s wider streets allow more mobility for the larger compactor trucks that pick up recyclables. There are 80 recycling vehicles currently servicing the city, with 14 in the Northeast, Hicken said.
To rescue the city’s recycling rate from the bottom of the barrel, officials launched a $1.5 million recycling-education campaign that included mailings, meetings and computer-generated phone calls to homes. The dollars for the outreach came from state grant funds awarded to the city for its recycling efforts.
Now the city has gone the route of emotional advertising by creating public service announcements featuring children talking about the "Future of Recycling." The messages are being aired on television and plastered on posters in subways and on some recycling trucks.
While the city was backing Everything Goes!, former city recycling coordinator Maurice Sampson II began urging residents to lobby for a more comprehensive recycling agenda.
Sampson, who worked for the city when the Recycling Office was separate from the streets department, has spread his message with Recycle NOW Philadelphia, a 2-year old campaign of the non-profit Recycling Alliance of Philadelphia.
He remembers the days when Philadelphia led the nation in recycling. In fiscal year 2005, Philadelphia ranked seventh of eight American cities with 1 million or more residents by recycling just under 5 percent of its trash by weight.
According to a city ordinance, the recycling rate should be between 35 and 40 percent, which the city controller’s office said in a 2005 report could save the city more than $20 million each year (the money goes into the city’s general fund). Deputy Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams said that the rate is debatable because it depends on the amount of recyclable material being produced.
To increase the city’s recycling numbers, Sampson and his group pitched a program that includes: a return to weekly collections; collection of all recyclable materials throughout the entire city; and the implementation of an incentive program called RecycleBank, which rewards residents with coupons. The latter was implemented in Chestnut Hill and West Oak Lane in 2005, where the recycling participation rate went from about 25 percent of eligible homes to 90 percent, according to RecycleBank’s figures.
The alliance also goaded all of the Democratic mayoral candidates into supporting a five-point agenda to address recycling. The proposed changes include appointing a new streets commissioner, deputy commissioner and recycling coordinator.
Christine Knapp, a Recycle NOW board member, and her non-profit group Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, also included recycling as one of their 10 suggestions of their Next Great City initiative, also to be implemented by the next mayor.
Since they’re not deadbeat recyclers, Knapp believes that Northeast residents should be the first to get a shot at weekly collections.
"We know they are good recyclers. We know we can get materials from them. I think they have a really good case in asking for weekly," Knapp said.
For those who don’t recycle, Knapp believes finding out the root of their aversion to the practice, not targeting them with advertising, is the only way to convert them.
RecycleBank could help because the program gathers data on specific residences that don’t recycle. The program can then just identify those individuals for outreach instead of spending money and manpower on citywide advertising and education, Knapp said.
Nancy Hampson believes a lack of education and communication in addition to physical limitations makes it difficult for residents in her Oxford Circle neighborhood to properly recycle.
Hampson claims that several seniors have gotten fines for failing to put their recyclables out at the right time or in the right manner.
"The community is getting fined left and right," Hampson said, "especially the elderly who can’t bring these cans down."
They’re instead using little plastic bags from the supermarket because they can’t lug the 20-ounce recycling containers to the curb. The streets department permits only paper, not plastic, bags to be used to hold recyclables.
Residents can obtain the standard collection bins at State Road and Ashburner Street or use a household container that holds less than 20 ounces and designate it by writing "recycling" on it.
In addition, Hampson contends that her area includes many immigrant residents who don’t speak English and may have trouble understanding how to recycle. The streets department said it can make available to residents informational fliers in other languages.
Williams, the deputy streets commissioner, said he was unaware of a problem with seniors being unable to tote their tubs to the curb and said that they can obtain smaller bins from his department.
"We would like to accommodate our seniors," he said last week. "We don’t want to make an inconvenience for them."
The department administered 19,000 fines for recycling violations in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2006, according to Williams. Most fines cost $25 but can increase if left unpaid. Residents typically first receive a warning by officers from the Streets & Walkways Education and Enforcement Program (SWEEP).
Hicken maintains that the city won’t cite a resident simply for not producing any recyclables — the ticketing occurs when a collector finds recyclables in the regular trash.
Other residents seem fairly pleased with the city’s current recycling options.
Normandy resident Diane Sadler enjoys the recycling surge but wishes the city collected every week as it did in her former residence in New York City.
She doesn’t buy the excuse that tugging a recycling tub out to the curb is any more strenuous than taking your garbage can out.
"I love it. I’m glad that they’re doing it," Sadler said of the single-stream program. "I hope everybody is supportive of it."
Somerton resident Glenn Graham said he sees overflowing recycling bins — a sign that his neighbors are following the rules — but he would prefer weekly pickup. Like Sampson, he believes an incentive would grow the number of people recycling.
"What I’d like to see is a credit on our individual water and sewer bill when we recycle," he said.
Holmesburg resident Crystal Eiswert is a zealous recycler.
In a 2005 Times article, Eiswert, a board member of the Upper Holmesburg Civic Association, explained how she fashioned a recycling center in her basement in which she dutifully separates the many varieties of reusable materials by category and puts them in bins. She then takes them to collection points all over the Greater Philadelphia area.
Since single-stream came on the scene, Eiswert’s habits have changed slightly. For instance, she no longer takes some of her recyclable items to Abraham Lincoln High School, where the Friends of Pennypack Park hosts collection days the morning of every third Saturday.
"(Curbside) is a lot more convenient," Eiswert said. "The people that already recycled still recycle. The people who don’t recycle still don’t."
Eiswert sees more effective means of recycling in cities like Quebec City, Canada, where multi-collection apparatuses inviting trash, plastics and metal into each compartment line the streets.
She thinks that for the true non-recyclers, a trip to the landfill might spur them into action. Such a visit proved to be the turning point in Eiswert’s environmentally conscious life.
"They need to take kids to a landfill to show them the results of not recycling," she said. "I was shocked at what a landfill looks like."
In the midst of Everything Goes!, some residents may have forgotten that other means of recycling are available in the Northeast.
The Friends of Pennypack Park collects recyclables at Abraham Lincoln High School, at Rowland and Ryan avenues, every third Saturday of the month from 9 a.m. to noon. The FOPP profits from the collections by selling the items to a recycling plant. In the past, the group has netted tens of thousands of dollars for its efforts.
Since Everything Goes! hit its stride, the group’s paper collections, the big money maker, have dwindled by 25 percent while plastics are down by half, according to Alan Kaminsky, vice president of environmental affairs for the group.
The FOPP, which allows residents to drive up and stay in their cars while volunteers collect their recyclables from their trunks, used to get about 500 carloads of people and now sees between 300 and 400 each month, Kaminsky said.
"We’re still making money and we funnel it back into the park," Kaminsky said. "(But) I think a lot of people don’t realize that we’re out there. As an environmental organization, we’re happy that the city is doing this. What we’re doing gives people a choice to help the park. (The city’s program) benefits the city."
FOPP also collects aluminum cans, packing peanuts and bubble-wrap and sets up a table of used books and magazines for visitors to take for free.
Residents can also follow Eiswert’s lead by visiting Recycling Services, a plant in Pottstown, Montgomery County, or attending a composting workshop through the streets department.
Samspon ultimately thinks that combining all of the above measures to achieve zero waste — meaning that people either recycle, compost or give most of their discarded items back to the manufacturer — can set Philadelphia on the path to achieving a high recycling-participation rate.
Hicken agrees with the concept and says that part of the recycling office’s outreach deals with waste minimization.
The department’s short-term plan includes testing single-stream recycling in another part of the city and bringing back weekly recycling collections, though the timeline depends largely on funding.
Hicken is uncertain of whether a voter-approved $130 million bond issue to be used for transportation, infrastructure and other city improvements would go toward the recycling program in the streets department.
Everything Goes!, Hicken contends, was a good way to start changing the city’s old recycling ways.
"We needed to jump start and kick start the program, make it exciting," Hicken said, "sort of knock down those barriers and myths." ••
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com
Here’s the dirt
on recycling . . .
For areas with single stream recycling
Place all these items in the same container:
• Glass food and beverage containers
• Aluminum and steel cans
• Empty aerosol and paint cans
• Plastic #1 and #2 containers
• Mixed paper, which includes newspaper and inserts, mail, envelopes, telephone books, magazines, catalogues, cereal-type boxes (remove the plastic liner), gift boxes and stationery
Do not include: Styrofoam, plastic toys, window glass, pots and pans, plastic bags and hard-covered books
For areas with dual stream recycling:
Place these glass and metal items in one container:
• Glass food and beverage containers
• Aluminum and steel cans
• Empty aerosol and paint cans
Place mixed paper items listed above in a brown paper bag or tie it with a string
Numbers to call:
Call 215-685-RECYCLE (7329) to report trash trucks mistakenly picking up recyclable materials or if a recycling truck misses your house or block.
Call the Streets Department’s customer service hotline at 215-686-5560 Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or e-mail csstreets@phila.gov
To get a recycling bin, visit State Road and Ashburner Street Monday through Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
If you are a senior or a disabled individual, get a smaller container by calling the streets department’s recycling office at 215-686-5470.
Friends of Pennypack Park Recycling at Lincoln High School, Ryan and Rowland avenues, takes place on the third Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to noon. ••