The long range plan for municipal waste

Something you probably missed (I know I did) from recent City Council action.

Last week Houston City Council voted to hire a company that will help local officials create and adopt a long-range waste and recycling plan. This wasn’t all over the news, but it is indeed a big deal—and a significant victory for Texas Campaign for the Environment that was years in the making. It could put Houston on a path to become the largest city in Texas working toward a Zero Waste future!

Most of the rest of the article recounts the fight over One Bin For All, followed by the fight over Mayor Turner’s original proposed recycling deal, which was eventually sent out for a rebid. True to what author Roseanne Barone writes, I couldn’t find any news about this, but you can see the Council agenda item in question here. I don’t know how long this will take to turn into a report for review, but given the way these things go it will either be breathtakingly ambitious but likely infeasible, or overly cautious and thus criticized by disappointed supporters. We’ll keep an eye out for it.

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2 Responses to The long range plan for municipal waste

  1. Bob Jones says:

    As far as I can tell, recycling doesn’t actually doesn’t achieve the net economic benefits (and I’ve been pulling that green bin to the curb for years). Factually, we don’t have a landfill space problem and only aluminum and cardboard are really of any value. Everything else costs more to recycle (in terms of carbon footprint) than to simply discard. The value for recycling has plummeted and will probably go even lower (to almost nothing). I’ll keep putting out the green bin, but I’m starting to question the carbon and economic impact. At the very least, the studies seem to muddy the waters on both sides.

  2. Jules says:

    Bob, I agree, I don’t think recycling accomplishes much at all. One way to tell how worthless it is – it doesn’t get stolen.

    Had a friend who years ago drove a trash truck for a major company. Businesses could get an extra dumpster for “recycling”. My friend picked both up in the same truck.

    It would be interesting to see where the contents of the green bins end up. And what it costs on all fronts to run 2 trucks instead of 1.

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