New recycling routines tested

Curbside recycling has become a weekly ritual for Donald Sowinski, who rolls a 96-gallon barrel filled with plastic, paper and metal waste to the front of his house every Friday for pickup.

Sowinski, 70, a southwest valley resident, said he likes tossing materials into a single bin on wheels rather than sorting them into three colored boxes. He appreciates having the stuff hauled away weekly instead of twice a month.

"It's a good situation," said Sowinski, a Southern Highlands resident. "I've had it in other states, and it works out great."

Sowinski said he also could live with having his garbage taken once a week instead of twice in exchange, as been proposed.

However, some of his neighbors disagree. He said they believe their trash will reek in the triple-digit heat that scorches Southern Nevada each summer.

Several years ago, Republic Services sparked an outcry from customers when company officials proposed shifting to once-a-week trash pickup, with once-a-week recycling pickup. Those critics voiced their concerns about refuse rotting in the heat for an entire week.

So last year Republic Services launched a pilot program to introduce some customers to once-a-week trash pickup and recycling and gauge their reactions.

Those customers were given a trash bin on wheels in which to pitch their recyclable items.

Nineteen subdivisions and an estimated 8,634 households are participating in North Las Vegas and unincorporated areas of Clark County. Another 19 subdivisions with 4,231 households are expected to join the pilot program by summer.

Company officials say it's part of their effort to increase recycling throughout the Las Vegas Valley, where an estimated 2 percent of households use the current curbside recycling service.

County commissioners plan to decide in the next month whether to hire an H&R Block subsidiary to assess the pilot program and answer such questions as:

• Are people willing to pay a little more for weekly recycling if they can their keep twice-a-week garbage pickup?

• If so, how much are they willing to pay?

• Is the 96-gallon recycling bin convenient or unwieldy?

Republic Services will reimburse the county the $75,000 cost for the evaluation, which could take until next year to finish.

Under the pilot program, 16 of the test areas have once-a-week garbage pickup and recycling, two areas have garbage collected twice a week and recycling once a week, and one subdivision has garbage hauled off twice a week and recycling offered every other week, just as is done now in the county.

The 19 neighborhoods that are preparing to join the program will all have weekly trash pickup and recycling.

Republic Services President Bob Coyle said the study is concentrating on the unpopular once-a-week pickup to get a sizable sampling of customers' experiences.

"We know everybody likes twice-a-week service," Coyle said. "So what we want to see is how they like once-a-week service."

He said that it was important to test the weekly service during hot weather to see whether people's concerns were well-founded.

The company will follow customers' wishes, as long as it can make money and commissioners approve, he added.

Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani said people already have said they want to stay with two days of trash pickup a week.

Adding weekly recycling runs would not cut into Republic Services' profits, she argued.

"I don't think they have to raise rates," Giunchigliani said.

Commissioner Steve Sisolak said his constituents not only want twice-a-week garbage service, they want to recycle everything they can.

The company is looking at excluding glass from the single-bin system.

Neighborhoods that joined the program in recent months were told not to put bottles and jars into the bin.

The company wants to determine how much recycling volume drops if glass is removed from the mix, Coyle said.

Coyle said the market for glass is weak. Also, glass containers often break at sorting plants, causing shards to embed in the paper, which then must be thrown away, he said.

Paper is the most important item to recycle, partly because of its resale value and also because it makes up the largest portion of trash dumped in landfills, said Tara Pike, who oversees the recycling program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Glass containers take up a lot of space on trucks and require a hefty amount of energy to melt or grind into sand for reuse, Pike said. Plus, less than 4 percent of waste is glass, she added.

Sowinski, the Southern Highlands resident, said many of his neighbors ignored the notice to not recycle glass and were chucking it into the barrels.

"I'd prefer a special container for glass," Sowinski said.

One environmentalist agreed with him.

People will throw away glass if they can't recycle it, said Peggy Maze Johnson, a member of Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group.

"There is something you can do with it," she said. "We have enough stuff in the landfill."

Contact reporter Scott Wyland at swyland@reviewjournal.com or 702-455-4519.