September 8, 2009
Recycling Effort to Get More Attention
More recycling is in your future.
Florida officials have an announced goal contained in legislation approved last year of increasing the state recycling rate to 75 percent by 2020.
By January, state environmental officials are supposed to present legislators with a proposal on how they plan to accomplish that.
They have a long way to go. The current statewide rate is about 28 percent.
County rates range from 50 percent in Sarasota County to 3 percent in Washington County.
Polk's reported rate is 20 percent, according to the most recent statewide information I could find.
There are several ways to approach the issue. Some involve carrots; some involve sticks.
Obviously, one place to start is education. The thinking is that if you show people why they should recycle and explain to them how to do so easily, you can win converts.
Expect more recycling lessons in school curriculums.
The draft proposals being circulated by state officials also call for more recycling information programs prepared by local governments to educate garbage customers.
The plan is to pay for the recycling programs in the most logical way, which is by adding fees to the trash that's dumped into the landfill instead of being recycled.
Some of the other, softer proposals include asking state agencies and universities to take stock of their recycling programs, encouraging public agencies to buy products made from recycled materials when it makes fiscal sense and making sure all of the recycling that is already under way is properly included in the calculations.
Some of the other parts will take more work.
One will be the implementation of a bottle bill. That means a system, such as the one that existed here many years ago, in which you can get a deposit when you return a beverage container to the store.
There was a heavy push for such a law in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Tallahassee, but corporate lobbyists persuaded legislators it was impractical.
Many other states have bottle-deposit laws and I've heard anecdotally from people living in those states that reduced litter is one of the benefits.
Another proposal is something called Pay As You Throw, which provides financial incentives in garbage bills for people who recycle most of their waste.
That would work somewhat like changing your home landscaping practices to lower your water bill.
There are other ideas out there that were listed by Recycle Florida Today, a private-sector coalition that commented on the state's plan, for information purposes only in its comments.
They are programs already under way in other states, including levying fines against people who refuse to sort their recyclables, requiring bars and restaurants to recycle beverage containers, requiring more commercial recycling and requiring more extensive curbside recycling.
More information is on the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Web site at tinyurl.com/2zooww.
It is clear there is unmet demand for recycling out there.
I recently heard of a case of a Lake Wales woman who complained to the County Commission because the county is closing the dropoff location at the former Southeast landfill on Friedlander Road near Babson Park. That leaves her and anyone else in her situation - she lives in a multifamily development - with no place to recycle anything.
Even where we have recycling dropoff centers, they are modest compared with those I've seen in Europe.
We can certainly do more than we're doing now.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20090908/COLUMNISTS/909085038?Title=Recycling-Effort-to-Get-More-Attention
