It’s cheaper to throw it in the landfill.
Chucking recyclable materials is easier, too.
It’s the status quo.
In the bigger picture, however, failure to recycle will cost the City of Dallas one of its biggest non-tax revenue sources, the McCommas Bluff Landfill. Municipalities all over Texas pay to send their trash to our landfill, which earns $22 million for the city every year. That offsets the $54 million the city spends on trash and bulk/brush disposal annually. At the rate the landfill is filling up, its life could end as soon as 2062. If that happened, the city would have to consider whether to build a new landfill or pay to have our garbage shipped at high cost to a landfill elsewhere.
There’s also the environmental concern: Plastic pollution alone kills as many as 1 million sea birds and 100,000 ocean mammals every year, for example. Take a walk out to any creek in Dallas to see our city’s own overwhelming plastic pollution firsthand.
Plastic is only one part of the picture. Dallas also lacks recycling efforts for food and yard waste, construction materials, glass and more.
Dallas is far behind the curve, even by the standards the city set for itself in 2013. But a brand-new $20-million recycling center and new efforts from city leaders show promise for the future.
Falling behind
Most homeowners recycle, but apartments and businesses typically do not. About 80 percent of single-family homes in Dallas have blue recycling bins.
And an ordinance went into effect last year that allows small apartment complexes to receive up to 10 blue bins for around $20 a month each, making it easier for tenants to recycle.
The city’s sanitation department also has reached out to small businesses to offer recycling plans.
But the recycling rate in Dallas has not improved since the city passed its “zero-waste plan” in 2013.
At that time, the city had a 20 percent “diversion rate.” That is the percentage of the city’s waste that doesn’t end up in the landfill. In 2013, City Council set a goal of increasing the diversion rate to 40 percent by 2020. This “zero-waste plan” included a voluntary recycling program for high-use clients like apartments and businesses.
As of March 2017, however, the city’s diversion rate remains stagnant at 20 percent.
“It’s pretty clear that there’s been little-to-no progress,” says Murray Myers of the city’s sanitation department.
Because the rate hasn’t increased, City Council may consider making recycling mandatory for apartment complexes later this year. About half of Dallas’ population lives in the city’s 2,300 apartment complexes. Only about 30 percent of those offer recycling.
“We’re going to be woefully short by 2019,” East Dallas City Councilman Philip Kingston says.
The Apartment Association of Greater Dallas hasn’t come up with a plan to increase participation, Kingston says.
In 2013, the message to apartment owners was, “Come up with something you guys can live with, or we’re going to hammer you,” Kingston says. But nothing apparently has changed.
There are some larger apartment owners, such as Lincoln Property Co., Camden and Gables Residential, that do a good job with recycling, says Kathy Carlton, director of government affairs for the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas.
Those operators offer recycling dumpsters to residents, and they recycle materials such as old carpeting and padding, Carlton says.
“We don’t believe anything is accomplished by mandating it,” Carlton says. “It needs to be something that people do willingly.”
Offering recycling dumpsters to apartment and office tenants could have zero cost to building owners if their tenants actually use them. It divides the same amount of waste between garbage and recycling pickups, which should keep costs flat. But requiring apartments to offer recycling without any education could result in empty recycling dumpsters that cost building owners while their trash dumpsters still fill up, Carlton says.
Education has to be a major component of any recycling plan, City Councilwoman Sandy Greyson says.
But the sanitation department’s marketing budget is only $200,000 a year, compared to its payroll budget, which is more like $45 million annually. They have radio spots and print ads, but they can’t afford TV commercials or other big media buys.
Their marketing dollars also go toward the Art for Dumpsters competition in Deep Ellum, now in its second year, in which local artists paint recycling dumpsters as a way to raise awareness. The department has demonstration gardens and other educational opportunities at its headquarters, Eco Park, in southeast Oak Cliff, where schools are invited for field trips.
The city’s new recycling facility, owned and operated by FCC Environmental Services, has an onsite classroom and recycling plant observation deck that schools will soon be able to visit.
“Kids are the ones who really need to get the message,” says Darrell Clemons, general manager of the Dallas FCC plant.
The Cadillac of bulk-and-brush pickup
Most municipalities would not pick up, say, a refrigerator, a car engine or part of a boat in regularly scheduled bulk trash pick-up.
But Dallas does. There are some who figure that Dallas has the most permissive bulk trash pick-up of any major city in the United States. Even things that bulk trash technically is not supposed to take — parts of fences and construction materials, for example — are collected in the interest of neighborhood cleanliness.
Our bulk trash practices also contribute to our recycling woes. That’s because bulk and brush are picked up together.
“We think we have clean brush, but then there’s a TV mixed in,” Myers says.
Last year, the department picked up about 170,000 tons of bulk and brush, about half of that is brush, and virtually none of it is recycled because of contamination.
If more had been recycled, the city could either sell the resulting mulch and compost or offer it free to Dallas residents, Myers says.
City Council could consider changing the bulk and brush pick-up later this year, and there are a couple of suggestions.
They could keep it virtually the same but push for residents to separate bulk and brush. Or they could pick up bulk and brush on alternative months.
If the bulk/brush problem is solved, the city could increase its diversion rate by up to 10 percent, Myers says.
Electronics: A landfill’s deadliest enemy?
Electronics take up the least amount of space in the 996-acre McCommas Bluff Landfill, yet they are the most detrimental to the environment.
These devices contain hazardous materials such as lead and mercury. When used technology is tossed in the landfill, the toxic chemicals can leak into the soil and seep into the water supply, Myers says.
The city manages four drop-off e-cycling locations to deter residents from dumping electronics in the trash or on the curb. Neighbors can leave items ranging from batteries to flat screen TVs at Bachman, Fair Oaks and Oak Cliff transfer stations, as well as McCommas Bluff’s Customer Convenience Recycling Center.
In 2016, the city collected 527,118 pounds of used devices.
Some residents aren’t aware of Dallas’ e-cycling program, Myers says, so the city plans to launch a media campaign this summer. It also is installing secure storage pods at each location to quell residents’ fears about dropping off cellphones and laptops with personal information.
But unpredictable changes in cost may be detrimental to Dallas’ efforts.
Electronic recycling companies struggle to earn a profit because the value of the materials they collect have decreased.
“When a recycler can’t sell materials, then they start to charge whoever is dropping it off money,” Myers says.
It’s a conundrum for many municipalities, including Dallas, which could pay anywhere between $31,000 to $148,000 a year for e-cycling companies to collect and recycle items. Four months ago, the city contracted with the company URT Solutions after ECS Recycling estimated its services would exceed $100,000.
“It is utilized, but if the cost of the program goes up, we may have to look at transitioning to another program,” Myers says.
There are other options, but they’re not as convenient as a drop-off location. The State of Texas now requires manufacturers to take back TVs and computers, and many businesses like Best Buy also have their own trade-in programs. —Elissa Chudwin
A wasteful problem
In a world where one out of every nine people is starving, according to The Hunger Project, it’s distressing to think that here in America 40 percent of our food ends up in the garbage. The City of Dallas estimates that 30 percent of all materials in its landfill are compostable material, and it’s working to do something about that.
“Last month, we attended a U.S. Composting Council conference and have returned with a few new ideas that we’ll be working on,” Myers says.
He would love to offer citywide compositing, but it is cost prohibitive and, unlike recycling, doesn’t have much potential to make money, allowing the program to cover its own expenses.
“We’ve evaluated organics recycling at Dallas ISD, sending food waste to the water department’s anaerobic digester and other programs, but we haven’t found a path forward,” Myers says.
The department does encourage residents to compost on their own. The Sanitation Services’ website offers step-by-step instructions for how to build a smell-free compost bucket at home, and the department has planned a series of free daylong workshops to teach residents everything they need to know to start composting (get upcoming workshop dates at dallascityhall.com/departments/sanitation).
For those who don’t want to get their hands dirty but want to help reduce waste, the North Texas company Recycle Revolution offers composting bins and coordinates pick-ups every week or month, depending on the need. They specifically target apartment complexes and restaurants, where large quantities of organic material end up in the landfill. —Emily Charrier
Recycling star: Times Ten Cellars
It killed Kert Platner to throw away hundreds of perfectly recyclable wine bottles every week when he first opened Times Ten Cellars on Prospect Avenue in 2005. But that was his only option at the time; the City of Dallas did not offer a way for businesses to easily recycle.
“There really wasn’t anyone doing recycling out there when we first opened,” he says. “For the first three years, we were throwing away every bottle we opened. It was terrible.”
Then Recycle Revolution launched in 2008 with the goal of improving green options for businesses across North Texas. Times Ten Cellars was one of the first to sign on for the new service, and today it has a Dumpster exclusively dedicated to wine bottles, which is diligently picked up weekly, keeping about 3,000 wine bottles a month out of the local landfill.
“It’s completely full, and it’s only wine bottles,” Platner says. “Obviously, that’s not free. You might think so because they make money off the recycling. But we pay for that [recycling bin].”
It was a worthwhile expense, Platner says. He and partner Rob Wilson are committed to being good stewards of the planet.
“That’s the way we grew up, in small towns where you conserve things,” Platner says. “For us, it’s a matter of principle and a matter of philosophy. This is important.”
That philosophy includes other green business practices. Now with a new kitchen, the restaurant is considering its options for composting, but it already recycles its cooking oils. When it comes to cardboard, the staff individually breaks down all of the business’ boxes, stacks them in a truck and transports it to Garland to be recycled every week — all at the winery’s expense.
“You simply can’t throw all of that away,” Platner says. “It’s shocking how much already ends up in landfills, we don’t want to add to that any more than we have to.”—Emily Charrier
Cool to compost:
Kitchen waste (e.g. egg shells,
vegetable and fruit scraps)
Leaves
Straw
Wood chips or sawdust
(untreated wood only)
Yard trimmings
Shredded paper, cardboard
or newspaper
Coffee grounds
Never compost:
Meat, including fish and poultry
Dairy products
Grease or oils
Pet feces
Treated wood
Ashes
Glossy paper