Nevada’s recycling rate lags

Steve Kanigher and Stacy J. Willis

Saturday, Aug. 26, 2000 | 4:11 a.m.

Environmentalist Jeff van Ee dutifully separates newspapers, plastics and other household wastes for curbside pickup by Republic Services of Southern Nevada, but he notices few of his neighbors doing the same.

While appreciative of the garbage company's willingness to collect recyclable material through its voluntary program, van Ee conceded he was not convinced his participation was paying off.

"My hat is off to them for doing the recycling service, but I don't get any feedback as to whether the stuff is being recycled," he said. "When I set the stuff out on the curb, I don't know where it ends up. I'm not sure the paper I put out is being turned into a useful product. How do I know it doesn't end up in the landfill?"

A lack of public education is merely one of many factors being blamed for Clark County's relatively low level of residential and commercial recycling.

A 1991 state law based on Environmental Protection Agency guidelines urged Nevada to recycle at least 25 percent of its residential and commercial waste by 1995. None of Nevada's 17 counties has achieved that goal, however. A national magazine ranked the state as one of the five worst when it comes to recycling.

Assemblywoman Vivian Freeman, D-Reno, author of the 1991 law, said she was disappointed but not surprised that the recycling goal has not been met.

"Some people just plain don't like recycling," Freeman said. "A lot of it has to do with perceptions such as 'How does it benefit me?' This is a live and let live state."

Clark County last year recycled only about 8.3 percent of its residential and commercial waste, a sharp decline from 16.9 percent in 1996.

Republic's residential collection program, which accounted for about 40 percent of the residential and commercial waste recycled in the Las Vegas Valley last year, actually increased slightly from 82,888 tons collected in 1996 to more than 85,000 tons in 1999.

But the county's overall figure, which included office and retail business waste collected by Republic and other companies, declined sharply from 382,589 tons in 1996 to 211,601 tons last year.

Shane Martin, an environmental health specialist with the Clark County Health District, said many of the county's estimated 40 companies that recycle waste from local businesses were stung by depressed markets in Asia, where they sell many of their products.

The county's low rate also is blamed on lack of government initiatives to promote recycling and on large amounts of potential landfill space that reduces the urgency to recycle. There also is virtually no participation from residents of apartment complexes.

The reality is that recycling is not discussed much by local politicians. Clark County Commission Chairman Bruce Woodbury said the county's low recycling rate was disappointing because "we had ambitious goals when we started it."

"It's kind of slipped off our radar screen and the public's as well," Woodbury said of recycling. "You don't hear much these days about running out of landfill space. Recycling is more of a personal issue."

Another reason for the recycling drop-off in the past three years was that in 1997 the state began excluding from its residential and commercial waste calculations such items as wood and used oil, batteries and anti-freeze.

With thousands of new residents moving to the county each month, environmentalists such as van Ee and Tara Pike of UNLV's Rebel Recycling Program wish Republic would do a better job promoting its residential pickup service.

"People get confused about what they can and cannot recycle," Pike said. "All these new people who move here don't even know we have a program."

But Butch Hurst, Republic's recycling plant manager, said the company provides route schedules and other recycling information in its garbage-collection bills, and occasionally gives plant tours to elementary school classes or Scout troops. Republic President Steve Kalish also said the company has promoted recycling through school programs and calendars.

"What type of educational services should we do?" Kalish said. "The problem is that recycling programs become a fad. There is never going to be a drive for recycling in Nevada. The big impact that drives recycling is high disposal costs, and we don't have them in Nevada and we never have had them."

Environmentalists promote recycling because of concern about the world's shrinking supply of natural resources, including the energy used to process raw materials. Many communities recycle out of necessity because of a scarcity of landfill space.

UNLV Professor James Deacon, who founded the university's environmental studies department, said any successful advertising program would have to explain the benefits of recycling and why the public should get involved.

"It's important to recycle because it's a way of reducing the total quantity of pollution that happens on Earth," Deacon said. "It helps with respect to our major environmental problems, such as global warming and the manufacture of raw materials that causes pollution.

"My guess is that people haven't seen the benefits of recycling because the benefits have been slow in coming."

Dave Friedman, Nevada's recycling coordinator, would love to promote the state's recycling hotline, which is (800) 597-5865.

"I'd like to plaster that number on several billboards in Las Vegas, but I don't have the money right now," he said.

Friedman works for the state Environmental Protection Division, which earlier this year recommended that Nevada take a series of steps to promote recycling. Among them is to require state and local government agencies to buy recycled products, provide tax incentives for businesses that also use such materials and increase public education on the issue.

State agencies and school districts are now required to recycle paper products but nothing else. As for tax incentives, the state currently offers partial real and personal property tax breaks for companies that recycle as long as they meet certain wage, job and capital investment requirements.

"Many states have taken more high-profile positions to mandate recycling than we have," said Les Gould, supervisor of the division's solid-waste section.

Mandatory recycling

In California, for instance, it is illegal to dispose of yard waste. Oregon consumers pay a nickle surcharge on soda bottles and then get their 5 cents back when they return the container. It is illegal to dump used tires, car batteries and refrigerators in Illinois.

According to BioCycle magazine, only Alaska, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming had lower residential and commercial recycling rates than Nevada's 12 percent in 1998. Minnesota, whose 45-percent recycling rate was highest in the nation, did nearly four times as much recycling as did Nevada, whose rate dropped from a high of 15 percent in 1996. Nevada's rate fell again to 11 percent last year.

"The lack of clear definition between the words 'garbage,' 'solid waste' and 'recyclable material' has a profound impact on recycling activities throughout the state," said a 1998 state recycling report to the Nevada Legislature.

The report noted that local government agreements that give the franchised garbage hauler "the right to every piece of material in the waste stream" discourage other companies from offering recycling services.

An example of vague language can be found in the franchise agreement between Republic and Clark County, which runs through 2035. Roma Haynes, the county's franchise services coordinator, said she did not think the county could prevent Republic from hauling recyclable material to the Apex landfill if the company could not find a buyer for those recyclables.

"I doubt that there is anything we could do," Haynes said. "If they have recycled material but can't market it, that's where the franchise agreement is vague. Just because they recycle a certain amount of material doesn't mean they can market it."

But the franchise agreement states that recyclable materials collected under the curbside program "shall not be deposited in any landfill or other disposal site without specific approval of (the) county."

County officials said Republic has never sought permission to dump recyclable material in its Apex landfill. Hurst said all the material collected in the curbside program is eventually recycled.

"It always has a market somewhere," he said. "We never bail it up and have them drop it in a landfill."

There are several barriers that must be overcome to increase recycling locally. Friedman said he has heard complaints that many apartment complexes are not designed with enough space to include recycling bins along with the regular garbage receptacles. That is significant because while there were 265,805 single-family homes in the valley as of last year, there were also 147,053 apartment units.

"That's one of the biggest concerns we hear from our members here in Clark County," said Jessica Hodge, the Sierra Club's local conservation organizer. "You have a large number of apartment complexes that don't have recycling bins at all. They don't make it easy for people living in apartment complexes who want to recycle.

"They don't recycle at government buildings either. The government needs to set an example for the community."

Republic spokeswoman Lee Haney, an executive with the Las Vegas public relations firm Rogich Communications Group, said the garbage company launched a recycling program in apartment complexes several years ago, but "it was just not successful. People didn't really participate, and in many cases it was impractical to try to get the bins and trucks in the tight complexes."

A county planning regulation gives apartment builders the option to provide space for recycling bins. To change that option to a requirement would necessitate approval from the Clark County Commission.

"The only reason it is not required is that it has never been brought up as an issue," county planning manager Barbara Ginoulias said.

Pike said another potential solution is to place recycling bins throughout the valley for apartment tenants who wish to participate.

"Cities in other states do this," Pike said. "When people feel comfortable with how to recycle, they feel good about recycling. But if they feel confused about recycling, they are less likely to do it."

Another barrier is that the county happens to have plentiful real estate for landfill use. Gould, in agreement with Kalish, said the scarcity of landfill space in some states drives up the cost of garbage dumping and helps promote recycling as an alternative.

"The cost to dispose waste is probably the single most determinant factor whether to recycle," Gould said. "If you can dump waste at $15 a ton, that cuts out a lot of the recycling businesses. The cost to dispose is low in Nevada. We're in the desert so we've got a lot of land."

Finding markets

Finding markets for recycled products also is problematic.

About the only dependable recycling market locally is for construction debris such as wood and metals, said Glenn Savage, environmental health supervisor for the county health district. The county last year recycled 624,430 tons of construction and demolition debris. That was nearly three times as much tonnage as the residential and commercial waste recycled in the county.

"It's difficult for recycling companies to locate here because for many of them their markets would be hundreds of miles away," Savage said.

The state Environmental Protection Division has recommended that another state agency, the Commission on Economic Development, hire someone to help develop a recycling market in Nevada.

Jerry Sandstrom, vice president of client services for the Nevada Development Authority, said his organization has attempted to recruit recycling companies to this state. But he recalled one case when the then-Public Service Commission rejected an application from a tire recycler to move to Nevada because the commission believed the company wouldn't have much work.

In another case, the state rejected an application from a company that wanted to recycle waste fluids because the applicant planned to import more fluid from out of state than it planned to collect in Nevada.

"The Environmental Protection Division director at the time said he didn't want Nevada to be an importer of this waste," Sandstrom said.

Waste Age magazine reported in May that curbside recyclers nationwide had a pretty good year in 1999 after weathering dismal prices the previous year. But the fact that prices of recycled materials fluctuate wildly is another barrier to overcome, according to Pike, whose program recycles UNLV-generated waste.

"The market goes up and down, which is one of the problems with recycling," Pike said. "I have to have a good enough support budget to withstand the down times in the market."

Buyers are now paying 50 to 60 cents a pound for aluminum cans, up to 18 cents a pound for certain plastics, and up to 9 cents a pound for paper products.

Used glass fetches only about 2 cents a pound, however, because glass is inexpensive to make. Used glass is worth so little money that cities such as Boise, Idaho, and Glendale, Calif., do not bother to collect it from residents.

Another hurdle is changing political attitudes about recycling. Washoe County, with a 21 percent solid-waste recycling rate in 1998 -- double that of Clark County -- has taken far more aggressive recycling measures. Washoe County, for instance, recycles its sludge so that the nutrient-rich soil can be used for agriculture. All of Clark County's sludge goes to the Apex landfill.

Washoe County also hired its own recycling coordinator and last year won an Environmental Protection Agency award for its waste prevention programs. These programs include the use of discarded school bus tires as retreads for county trucks, the use of re-refined oil and the use of carpet squares rather than rolls to more easily replace floor coverings. Washoe also demands that all county bids be made on recycled paper.

"My speculation is that the institutional commitment, both from Republic and from city and county ordinances, simply isn't sufficient to raise the issue of recycling high enough to be effective," Deacon said of Southern Nevada. "In order for us to do a better job of recycling we need more institutional pressure to help people do the right thing."

A 1999 state report noted that most of the 300,000 customers served by Republic in Clark County had requested residential recycling bins. But the report quoted Republic as stating that only 15 to 36 percent of the homes on some routes actually recycle.

"Washoe County is doing a pretty good job of meeting the state's goal," Friedman said. "Clark County, I think, is where we need to concentrate."

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