What do San Diego and Bakersfield have in common? They're the only two of the top 20 cities in California that don't have uniform curbside recycling services.
by Stuart Watson
n the past several years, solid waste recycling programs
have grown in virtually every part of California. But, the City of San Diego
just doesn't seem to be able to get with the program.
Uniform curbside recycling has been implemented
in all parts of San Diego County except for the city itself. Furthermore,
it has been implemented in all large cities in California except San Diego
and Bakersfield.
Last month, City Council members again refused
to take a leadership role when they declined to expand curbside services.
In fact, they even considered eliminating the current limited services.
What makes San Diego so retrograde with respect
to this important service? Conventional wisdom holds that municipal budgets
are too tight, and elected official gauge that residents are reluctant to
pay for these services. Time and time again, one hears statements such as,
"Recycling is a good idea, it just costs too much."
Misconceptions about the economics of recycling
are widespread. Several national media sources have recently and strongly
denounced recycling, claiming that the costs to a community are much greater
than the benefits. For example, one article appearing in The New York Times
claims, "Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in Modern America:
a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources."
Finding that there is no national shortage of landfill capacity, this and
similar articles have accused recycling of being a government mandate that
is diverting funding from more essential basic services. Articles and statements
such as these are hurting San Diego residents by weakening public support
for, and participation in recycling programs.
This article aims to dispel these misconceptions
by providing a more thorough picture of the costs and benefits of recycling
than the usual superficial treatments. First, we will look at the conventional,
direct costs of recycling programs. Next, we will focus on the indirect
costs and benefits of recycling programs - factors that are often ignored
but that have a substantial impact on the economics of recycling.
Recycling does not "cost too much."
The vast bulk of recycling (73 percent by weight) consists of commercial
waste products and products collected through drop-off and buy-back centers.
These centers almost always operate at a profit. (The San Diego phone book
lists three pages of private recycling businesses.)
Another 14 percent of recycling collections
are generated by yard waste composting programs. These programs alone usually
cost significantly less than basic refuse collection and disposal.
What is left is the implicit target of the
anti-recycling forces: residential curbside recycling.
The high cost of implementing and operating
curbside recycling programs provides ammunition for anti-environmental interests
who claim that mandatory recycling goals and ordinances, such as California's
Assembly Bill 939, are hurting our local economies. These recycling critics
argue that it costs more to collect and process a ton of recyclables than
it does to collect a ton of refuse, and the value of the recovered materials
does not compensate for this cost.
These claims are supported by a 1994 study
by Franklin Associates, Ltd. The study found that the value of the recovered
recycled materials only covers the cost of processing the materials. The
average national curbside recycling collection cost was estimated at $114
per ton, while refuse collection costs were only $71 per ton.
This criticism is based on valid, but incomplete,
information. The above analysis only considers collection costs, and ignores
the costs and benefits of the alternative program options. A more appropriate
way of determining the relative values is to compare the net cost per ton
of curbside recycling (collection and processing costs, minus the revenue
generated by selling the recovered materials) to the total cost per ton
cost of refuse disposal (collection, hauling, and dumping fees). These costs
differ greatly between communities, depending on the local geography, geology,
economy, demographics, institutional arrangements and other factors.
There are many examples of municipalities that
have achieved a lower cost for recycling than for refuse disposal. Yet,
curbside recycling costs do remain higher than refuse service costs in the
majority of communities throughout the country.
A number of factors conspire to make recyclable
collection, as generally practiced, less efficient than refuse collection.
Fewer residents participate in curbside recycling. Those participating set
out bins less frequently, and recycling bins generally hold much less than
a trash bins. By contrast, all households typically have refuse service
and very few households miss a collection day. Thus, a recycling vehicle
must travel further, make more stops, and spend more time at each stop than
a refuse truck to collect each ton of material.
This relationship has important consequences:
to lower curbside recycling costs, increase recycling participation. The
costs of collection make up the largest component of the recycling process.
As more households participate, the travel time between each collection
stop is minimized. As more materials are recycled at each stop, less distance
is traveled for more materials.
These assertions have been verified in a comprehensive
study which found that curbside recycling collection costs drop as participation
rates increase. Another 60-city study calculated that when the recycling
rates increase to more than 10 percent of total waste generated, recycling
collection costs are reduced by 64 percent.
This relationship has important consequences
for San Diego area residents. Less than 30 per cent of the households in
the City of San Diego currently have access to curbside recycling, and it
is estimated that only 75 percent of these households participate. Furthermore,
the households that are participating are still throwing many recyclables
in the trash. This under-utilization of recycling bins is endemic in all
areas in San Diego County. It substantially increases costs for all residents
and further limits the funding available to expand curbside recycling to
new areas.
In contrast, Seattle households generate only
about half the amount of trash and more than three and a half times the
amount of recyclables as the average household with curbside recycling in
the City of San Diego. Consequently, Seattle saves close to $45 for every
ton of solid waste they recycle.
High recycling rates are common in communities
that provide residents with economic incentives to recycle by charging them
according to the amount of trash they throw away. Recycling costs can also
be lowered by using an automated system in which residents set out all recyclables
in the same bin (co-mingled), instead of having to separate the materials
into different bins themselves. By using this system, Phoenix has been able
to reduce net recycling costs to $50 per ton. This is roughly the same as
the lowest cost for collecting and disposing of a ton of trash in San Diego
County.
The message is simple: poor public participation
and poor public and official support for recycling programs increase your
taxes and solid waste service fees. With enough support and participation
by residents, curbside recycling can provide a significant cost savings.
The previous analysis only considers the conventional
financial costs borne by the agency or business managing solid waste programs
in our community. As residents, we pay for these costs. However, we also
experience a multitude of other, more significant economic and environmental
costs and benefits with each solid waste management alternative. These include
the costs and environmental impacts of the waste stream on our air, water,
energy and land resources. Unfortunately, these factors are difficult to
measure and quantify, and only a handful of studies have been performed.
This had led to a tendency to discount these factors, even though the costs
and impacts are real.
One influential study by the Tellus Institute
(1992) attempted to quantify the air and water pollution generated by items
that are commonly found in the waste stream. The pollution costs were evaluated
using the current costs of remediation and pollution abatement, indicating
the economic value that society places on particular pollutants. In other
words, these are the costs that society endures for maintaining air and
water quality at minimum acceptable levels.
The Tellus study found that the environmental
costs for collection and disposal of refuse is about $1 per ton. The direct
environmental costs of collecting and processing recyclables were slightly
higher. However, when the environmental impacts of using these recovered
recyclables were included (replacing new raw materials that would have to
be used), the net result was a substantial environmental benefit.
When we apply the air and water pollution costs
from the study to the typical components of a curbside recycling bin collected
in the City, the net environmental benefit of production with these recyclables
(minus the environmental costs of collecting, processing and transporting
them) is a whopping $98.79 per ton.
While the Tellus analysis quantifies the pollution
cost savings of using recycled materials in the production process, it does
not attempt to quantify the energy cost savings. The process of extracting
a natural resources and turning it into a usable raw material is often extremely
energy intensive. In contrast, the use of recycled materials as feedstock
into a production process requires minimal processing.
A recent study by the Environmental Defense
Fund (1995) calculates that the use of one ton of recovered materials in
the production of new products saves $187 worth of electricity, petroleum,
natural gas and coal, even after accounting for the energy used to collect
and transport the materials. This cost savings benefit the producer, who
can pass the savings on to the consumer. This energy and material cost savings
is the reason that there has always been substantial recycling in the industrial
sector - long before any government recycled mandate was born.
Recycling programs benefit the local economy
by creating jobs and supporting the tax base. A report by the Institute
for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) found that 15,000 tons of solid waste creates
an average of one job if landfilled, two jobs if incinerated, seven jobs
if composted, and nine jobs if processed for recycling. The economic potential
of recycling is further expanded if a community recovers enough materials
to attract new scrap-based remanufacturing industries.
A 1996 study by ILSR estimates that paper mills
and plastic manufacturers based on scrap materials currently employ 60 times
more workers than landfills. The economic benefits from remanufacturing
scrap material can be enormous: the State of Massachusetts benefited from
$588 million of added value by recyclable remanufacturing in 1991.
These attempts at quantifying environmental
and economic factors for solid waste activities and material production
may be far from exact, but they represent real costs and benefits to society.
Comparing the impacts of recycling to the costs and benefits of refuse disposal
shows that every community should establish and incorporate a fiscal preference
for recycling programs to compensate for the non-market factors.
Recycling is not an "environmental hobby;"
it is an economic imperative. But before you rush out to purchase cases
of products in recyclable packaging, remember that recycling is an alternative
to trash disposal. Source reduction is the primary goal, and every ton of
waste that is prevented at the source saves your community hundreds of dollars
in operational, environmental, and energy costs.
If your household already has curbside recycling,
support the program by participating fully. If your household does not have
recycling, contact your Mayor and City Council representatives and express
your support for curbside recycling or additional, convenient recycling
drop-off locations.
Remember: trash is a terrible thing to waste.
Stuart Watson is a Project Coordinator at the Urban Corps of San Diego with a peculiar interest in solid waste management. He is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Public Administration at SDSU, writing his thesis on Unit Pricing for Solid Waste. He can be reached at (619)235-0137.
