CITY ASKS MORE PEOPLE TO RECYCLE
Houston Chronicle
By Matt Stiles
June 1, 2006 - Neighborhoods that improve their participation in the city's slumping recycling program could get cash rewards and low-participation neighborhoods could lose curbside pickup under a city plan unveiled Thursday.
"It is a competition," said the city's solid waste director, Thomas "Buck" Buchanan. "There are rewards, and there may be consequences."
Mayor Bill White said the plan calls for a communications "blitz" to encourage more residents to dispose of recyclable products - among them plastic bottles, aluminum cans and paper - in curbside bins.
Using cajoling mail notices, door hangers and water bill inserts, the effort would offer four $5,000 rewards to civic associations in neighborhoods that most increase their participation or volume. And those that don't get involved could be dropped from the curbside recycling program, which now serves about 260 subdivisions, in favor of other neighborhoods still seeking the service.
The recycling initiative includes a completed effort to quantify participation in the subdivisions. That data will be used to see which neighborhoods increase involvement.
The effort is a response to declining participation. From 2001 to 2005, collected tonnage went down 13 percent. When the program started in the 1990s, it served about 67,000 homes with 13 solid waste crews. Today, 10 crews collect from 162,000 homes.
Buchanan said that means the city spends more on collection than it earns back from reselling recyclable products and from saving on landfill fees.
Even so, he said, too few people in neighborhoods that have petitioned for the service take advantage. And even those that do get involved could put out a higher volume of recyclables, he said.
Buchanan, armed with a $350,000 budget, said the subdivisions would be "bombarded" with information over the next several months.
"Those communities that increase participation or the volume the most will be rewarded," he said. "Those communities that don't get the message are, frankly, subject to being dropped from the program."
Information about the city's recyling program can be found at www.houstonsolidwaste.org.