Orange County peering into recycling bins to check for no

Sep 01, 2023

Stephen Hudak/Orlando Sentinel

A peek in a curbside recycling bin in the Park Manor neighborhood in east Orange revealed some items that could contaminate a recycling load and send it to the landfill instead of a processing center: a Styrofoam cup, a clothes hanger, holiday lights and a plastic bag.

Sentinel file photo

Orange County has hosted a celebration to emphasize the importance of recycling.

Stephen Hudak/Orlando Sentinel

Brooks Baker, 34, hopes the test program in his Park Manor neighborhood leads to better recycling results in Orange County where 90 percent of recycling loads were rejected last year because of contamination.

George Skene / Orlando Sentinel

Heavy equipment packs down garbage at the Orange County landfill.

Truckloads of recyclable aluminum cans, cardboard boxes and plastic water bottles hauled to the Orange County recycling center every day are eyeballed then rejected as tainted because the freight also contains gobs of throwaway stuff that can’t be easily processed into reusable materials.

Rather than truck it to a sorting center where it likely would be turned away, it ends up going in the landfill. County sanitation officials have determined that a big part of the problem is residents who put the wrong things in the blue-lid roll-cart — stuff like greasy pizza boxes, stained blankets, Styrofoam coffee cups and flimsy plastic grocery bags, which could possibly be recycled somewhere — but not by the curbside collection program.

“This needs to change,” said David Gregory, the county’s new solid-waste boss.

Under a test program that started Thursday, county sanitation workers will peek into the recycling bins of 641 households and grade what they see before a truck picks it up.

Each inspected cart will be given a weekly tag ranging from “Great Job” to “Good Try” to “Oops.”

Some might include a “YUCK” notice, pointing out the no-no of putting food or liquids in the recycling roll-cart.

The tags, written in English and Spanish, also feature a picture of a child either giving two thumbs up, meaning the resident got it right; one thumb up, meaning mostly right but with room for improvement; or making an “Oops” face, meaning the cart was filled with lots of stuff that didn’t belong in there.

“We’re not trying to be nasty,” Gregory said. “The tags also say ‘Thank you.’ We know people are trying to do the right thing. Sometimes they just might need an ‘Oops’ tag as a reminder for the materials they should be putting in that recycling cart.”

He said residents frequently “wish-cycle” — they fill their recycling cart with items they wish were recyclable but aren’t.

The six-week test program, based on a similar strategy that improved recycling efforts in Atlanta, could be expanded into other Orange County neighborhoods if it works in Park Manor, a working-class subdivision off Dean Road in east Orange, Gregory said.

Failure to recycle the “right way” is costing the county money, and it will soon cost homeowners more, too.

The annual sanitation fee charged to property owners is going up $10 to $230 next year — and $5.94 of that increase is to pay for recycling education.

Education is the program’s goal.

“Most people will try to do it right if they know how to do it,” Gregory said.

The tags include the solid-waste division’s phone number, 407-836-6601, and a reminder, “When in doubt, leave it out.”

Avoid plastic bags, he said.

Don’t bag recyclables or put any empty plastic bags in the blue-lid recycling cart. They tend to gum up machinery at the processing center, causing costly shutdowns.

“Think 5,” said Jamie Floer, a spokeswoman for Orange County Utilities, repeating a slogan the county promotes on Facebook, Twitter and its website, www.ocfl.net/recycles.

Those five kinds of recyclable items are: plastic bottles stamped with a number 1 through 5; metal cans; clean cardboard like a shoe box or empty cereal box; empty glass bottles and jars; and newspaper.

The 641 guinea pigs in the six-week test program were mailed postcards alerting them that county employees would be looking in their recycling bins on Thursdays, the subdivision’s usual collection day for recyclables.

Floer said the neighborhood was chosen because they have “potential to improve.”

Brooks Baker, 34, a resident who was doing yard work Wednesday when the county held a demonstration for TV stations, said he didn’t mind the county snooping in his recycling bin.

“If it’s going to help out recycling and get stuff to the right place, I’m OK with it,” he said. “It’s just trash. What do I care?”

A woman who declined to give her name said the inspectors would only find “a whole lot of beer bottles. Those are recyclable, right?”

Yes, she was told, the empties are.

A man walking his dog Gizmo said some neighbors put grass clippings and other yard waste in the blue-lid recycling bin. That’ll earn an “Oops” tag, Gregory said.

Jose Medina, 70, also welcomed an inspection of his recycling “dumper.”

“I recycle a lot,” he said. “I think I do it right. I want everyone to.”

Orange County, which has had a recycling program in place since 1990, formerly collected glass and plastic recyclables in green bins and old newspapers and cardboard in orange bins, which were left at the curb.

As recently as 2015, the program collected an average of 2,220 tons of recyclables a month and few loads were rejected for contamination.

China, the biggest consumer of America’s recycled trash, was a lot less picky back then. But things have changed.

A ton of Orange County recyclables fetched about $110 in 2011. In January, a ton brought in $37.

China doesn’t want our garbage now unless it’s near perfect, Gregory said, noting that recycling markets there and everywhere else are at all-time lows.

“It’s not just a problem in Orange County, it’s a state and national problem,” he said.

Orange County changed to single-stream recycling in 2016. Residents toss all recyclable materials — aluminum cans, paper, milk cartons — into one 95-gallon roll-cart.

After the switch, participation soared. County figures show the program collected 6,000 tons of recyclables a month.

But as volume increased so did contamination, Floer said.

Most loads had contamination estimated to be in excess of 15 percent, which qualifies for rejection.

In the last fiscal year, four of every five recycling loads — usually weighing 5 tons each — have been deemed “contaminated” and sent to the landfill. Some months the rejection rate topped 90 percent.

About 30 percent of all household materials discarded in recycling bins in Florida are actually not recyclable at curbside and clog machinery at processing centers, state statistics show.

Contamination costs an average of $125 per ton, according to floridarecycles.org, a website created to help Florida boost its recycling rate to 75 percent by 2020.

[email protected] or 407-650-6361.

Sign up for email newsletters