Single-stream recycling a hit with residents

In April 2012, Little Rock residents’ 18-gallon recycling bins were replaced with 64-gallon green and yellow wheeled carts and the recycling system changed from dual-stream requiring the customer to separate recyclables to single-stream in which all recyclables are mixed together.

With that change, the number of homes participating in the program leaped, writes Linda S. Haymes in HomeStyle.

“The change led to the city’s recycling participation rates more than doubling and it tripled the city’s recycling tonnage,” says Melinda Glasgow, the city’s sustainability officer.

In Little Rock, where 58,000 homes can potentially join the program, the participation rate increased from about 35 percent to more than 80 percent, Glasgow says. And volume has tripled from about 30 tons a day to 90 tons a day since the service converted to the single-stream method in spring 2012.

See Saturday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more about recycling in central Arkansas and around the state.

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