Oct. 28-- Oct. 28--Beginning Friday, weather permitting, residents of the unincorporated parts of Sarasota County will begin seeing big, rolling recycle bins perched at their curbs.
These larger containers, meant to hold all recyclable items mingled together, will show up at a rate of some 3,400 a day until Dec. 20, said Wendi Crisp, outreach coordinator for the county's solid waste department.
But don't start filling them right away with your cans, bottles and newspapers. The carts will come with a fresh set of instructions, including the warning that anything placed inside will not be picked up until Jan. 6.
"Just remember to think: New year, new cart," Crisp said at a media presentation Monday. This change applies only to county residents who live outside Sarasota, Venice, North Port and Longboat Key.
And there will be a few other rules to keep in mind. Because the two main culprits that contaminate the single-stream process are plastic bags and gooey pizza boxes, residents are asked to be especially vigilant about such items -- along with anything else wet or tangly that can gum up the works at a recycling plant.
You can review these guidelines, get your questions answered and see a map of cart delivery dates by going to the county website, scgov.net, and clicking on "Sarasota County Recycles" under the government tab.
The city of Sarasota switched to single-stream recycling -- with items sorted at the facility instead of in the home -- in April, and saw an immediate surge in participation. The latest figures from September, according to city spokesperson Jason Bartolone, suggest that the improvement is holding steady: over 304 tons of recyclables were collected that month, compared to 225 tons a year earlier.
That represents a nearly 35% increase in solid waste diverted from the landfill. It won't necessarily translate into a similar volume for the county, because people in different types of neighborhoods have different recycling habits.
This uptick in household buy-in is the main reason cited by local governments to make the costly switch to new carts and trucks. Research has shown that delegating the finicky task of sorting paper from plastics to conveyor belts and optical scanners -- instead of the folks at the source of the trash -- can overcome whatever reservations or avoidance some people feel about taking the time to recycle rather than toss.
But the drive to single-stream the collection process has been promoted for at least five years by waste management companies. Because the procedure is similar to garbage pickup, using trucks equipped with automated arms to hoist and dump the bins, it's less labor-intensive than lifting containers by hand at curbside.
The trade-off between higher household participation and a less efficient sorting process is still being evaluated and debated. An increase in the number of contaminated materials, reflecting a nationwide shift to the single-stream method, led to a limitation of the amount of recycled waste China and other countries will accept from the United States. This has added to the overall cost of recycling. But another change -- a boosted demand for recycled paper used in home delivery boxes -- had a positive impact on the market.
Waste Management, the county's disposal contractor, is sharing the $6.2 million cost of converting to new containers, said Brian Usher, solid waste collection manager, with about $600,000 in grant money. Assessments for county collection go up by about 17% in next year's budget -- but that rise reflects an overdue adjustment to rate unchanged since 2005, Usher said.
Waste Management will deploy 27 new trucks for curbside pickup, operating on compressed natural gas instead of diesel fuel. Residential collection schedules will remain unchanged. The old red and blue bins can be brought to county sites, to be announced later, so the plastic bins themselves can be recycled.
"Or you can keep them for storage, or even repurpose them," Crisp said.
