Maumelle residents won’t have to throw their junk mail, milk jugs or juice cartons into the trash starting this week, when the city’s expanded recycling program gets underway.
Those items, along with paper bags, steel cans, magazines and others, will be picked up curbside on weekly recycling routes by the Public Works Department with no additional cost to residents. Collection schedules won’t change.
The recyclables will be collected in a single-stream process in addition to newspapers, plastic bottles and aluminum cans, which residents were already allowed to recycle. In single-stream recycling, residents don’t have to separate items because a machine does that at a facility.
Glass, plastic bags and foam plastic such as egg cartons still won’t be allowed. A complete list of what items will be accepted or rejected is available on maumelle.org’s Public Works Department page.
Expanding the city’s recycling program came after months of negotiations between Mayor Mike Watson and Waste Management of Arkansas, which collects curbside recycling in nearby Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood. In those cities, 64-gallon containers are collected every two weeks.
Watson said the city reached an agreement for Maumelle to collect the recyclables and take them to Waste Management’s Materials Recycling Facility. The agreement allows the city to collect more recyclables without additional cost while continuing weekly curbside collections. The deal also allows residents to keep using 18-gallon blue bins for their recyclables instead of adding a second 64-gallon container, which are used for garbage collection.
“We got a lot of feedback from people who didn’t want another large bin and from people who did not want to pay the extra $3,” Watson said, referring to the added cost if Waste Management had taken over the city’s recycling collection. “There will not be an extra $3 charge. The only downside is some people think the small bin is not enough.”
To help accommodate residents who will recycle the most, the city will provide up to three free recycling bins per household, Watson said. The Public Works Department received 1,000 new blue bins Friday, said Joanie Smith, assistant director for the department.
About 200 households had been on a waiting list for the bins, which will be delivered by the department, she said. Residents who want another bin can request one by calling the Public Works Department at (501) 851-2888. Overflow items can also be put into paper bags and placed next to the bins.
“We had an overabundance of phone calls,” Smith said, from residents wanting to add bins. “It was a very positive thing, we thought.”
A recycling survey done a year ago showed that slightly more than 10 percent of Maumelle households recycled, Smith said.
“We’re hoping that number increases,” Smith said. “We think it will. Just judging from the number of bins being requested, we think that number will rise.”
Watson said the expanded program isn’t expected to add to the city’s costs, and could end up saving the city money.
“Anything that can be recycled reduces what we take to the landfill and have to pay to tip there,” Watson said. “If we increase our recycling and reduce our solid waste, that reduces our tipping fee, and we’re charged per ton.
“We could see an extra fuel cost if our truck fills up because of it getting more recyclable materials to haul, and it might have to run twice,” he added. “That will probably be a happy problem to have.”
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 02/23/2014