Environment & Pollution
Recycling Not a Priority in Houston
By Jenny Yau
Nov 26, 2005, 20:10

Are our cute, green recycling bins merely just for show?

Compared to cities elsewhere, it doesn’t cost much to dispose of trash at the landfill because land around Houston is abundant. So, there’s minimal financial incentive to recycle.

Curbside recycling is the city’s largest of the programs in effect. Curbside recycling has been in existence since 1990 and now serves 170,000 homes every other week.

The city distributes green recycling bins to residential homes in 300 neighborhoods where residents are encouraged to separately place recyclable items, such as paper, metals, plastics and used oil.

Houston is at the bottom environmental ladder. Houston’s Deputy Director of Solid Waste Management Edward Chen, who oversees city-wide recycling, says only three to four percent of trash is actually being recycled.

Houston falters in comparison to San Francisco and Seattle, where over 50 percent of the trash is recycled.

Chen explains that cities like San Francisco and Seattle have run out of landfills. The cost of dumping trash in a landfill on the East Coast is seven times higher than it is in Houston. And West Coast landfill fees are five times higher than in Houston.

Chen says residents and businesses would recycle too if Houston had a mandatory law but there is little support for changing the law.

“Anytime we talk about raising peoples’ trash bills, people are very against having to pay more for any kind of service,” said Patty Foster with Keep Houston Beautiful. “I don’t know how successful we would be.”

After a Thanksgiving with old friends, food and booze, local Houstonian Thomas Kinkaid found his cute, green recycling bin overflowing with crushed beer cans. His friend, Michael, a native Houstonian currently living in Oakland, California, collected all the glass beer bottles and asked where they belonged.

Thomas yelled, “Trash it. We don’t recycle glass here.”

In 1999, glass became exempt from curbside pickup due to its dwindling revenue in value.

After leaving Houston and living in Oakland for five years, Michael saw his hometown’s recycling habits on this return visit in a distinctly, different light. He grew up in a household that didn’t recycle even though his neighborhood, Fondren SouthWest, has had a neighborhood pick-up program for years.

He scoffed at the miniscule scale of Houston’s recycling bins, saying that each household in Oakland had three separate bins with each serving their own purpose.

In Houston, each household has one or more big black trash bins. In Oakland, Michael reports: “the recycling bin is bigger than trash bins.”

“Pretty much every food product that you buy comes in some form of container that can be recycled,” said Michael. “Foods can be recycled as well.”

There are three strategies for curbside recycling: mandatory, incentive placement and voluntary. Texas is a voluntary state, yet there is a lack of volunteers, a lack of incentive and a lack of education.

If you drive around on a typical recycling Tuesday, even in Montrose, a reputably liberal, environmentally aware area in Houston, the city’s general lack of participation is apparent. The green recycling bins sitting outside are scarce. Rather, rows and rows of supersized big, black trash bins overflow with trash.

Residential recyclables in the city are only a small fraction of the total waste. What about the businesses that contribute most of the waste to the landfills?

“By code we can only service city residential areas,” said Chen. “We have to change our code. At this time we just can’t do anything.”

Chen says that it would take more than a mere suggestion from Waste Management to rewrite the code.

Mayor Bill White has decided to address the issue by investing $600,000 to hire a recycling coordinator whose goal will be to increase curbside recycling through a massive education campaign.

It may be just the ticket.

Chen says that in the past few years participation has dwindled at least 10 to 20 percent.

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