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AIR DATE: February 4, 2011
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Republic Services is trying to implement a recycling pick-up program in Clark County. It claims it's already had success with trial programs in Henderson. But that means switching to once-a-week pick-up, and some local residents (including a Clark County Commissioner) don't want to give up the twice-a-week system. What options does the trash service have? Are Las Vegans culturally averse to recycling? And compared to cities like San Francisco and Seattle, why is it taking so long to adopt a solid recycling program?
GUESTS
Chris Giunchigliani, Clark County Commissioner
Bob Coyle, VP, Republic Services
John Taylor, Govt Relations Mgr, CleanScapes in Seattle
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Dear Mr. Borrogan,
Republic Services was asked to implement these programs by the Clark County Commission on August 21, 2007. We are willing to provide what ever service level each of the cities and county wants. In the new pilot programs there is no longer a need to sort recyclables. Republic provides each residence with a large wheeled cart for trash and a large wheeled cart for recycling. You can just throw all of your recyclable materials into the recycling cart without sorting them. It does get hot in Las Vegas. It also gets hot in Tucson, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Fresno, Sacramento, El Paso, Fort Worth, Tempe, Austin and Glendale. These were the cities that Clark county surveyed that all have 1x trash and 1x recycling and that have recycling rates that are substantially higher than Clark County. In each of these cities trash and recycling services ranked very high when the city did customer sdatisfaction surveys
Bob Coyle –
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Dear Megan,
The reaosn we do not collect green waste separately in the pilot programs is that there is no market for composting in the Clark County area. The closest outlet for residential greenwaste is the San Joaquin Valley in California because of the agricultural fields. Unfortunately the cost of collecting green waste separately and then transporting it to California would cause a significant cost increase as well as an increase in green house gases that makes it ineffective. You can put your green waste in your trash cart for collection or bag or bundle it and put it out for collection on your bulky item collection day every other week. If you have any problems with your bulky item collection service please feel free to call me on my direct number at 599-5501 and I will correct the problem.
Bob Coyle –
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I completely agree with Going Green Girl's comments. This should not be such a political issue. Regardless of the past, we need to look forward towards the future and how we can increase recycling for our communities and environment! The fact is the new recycling pilot programs are more efficient, cost effective, keeps communities cleaner and will increase our valley wide recycling rates. Most city's across the U.S. have once a week trash and once a week recycling. The recycling service Republic Service's is offering appears to be the ONLY viable option!!
Courtney –
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I agree with Going Green Girl's comments. this is not a political issue. This is a survivl issue for our environment and planet.
Charlotte Leas –
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Dear Mike,
Envelopes can be recycled and are recycled as mixed office paper. There is no problem with the glue on the evelopes. Plastics recyclers are now able to recycle the plastic bottls caps. There is no need to remove the plastic caps from the bottles. We have spent approximately $5.5 million to upgrade our recycling facility over the last 5 years and will be doing another $1.8 million upgrade in 2011 adding additional equipment that will increase the productivity at the Republic Services recycling center. We have increased productivity from about 10 tons per hour in 2007 to between 25 and 30 tons per hour currently. There are approximately 110 employees at the recycling center. The biggest issue with materials placed in the recycling containers is food waste. If a pizza box is free of stuck cheese it is fine in the recycling but if it has a lot of food stuck to the cardboard it should be put in the trash. In general we have less than 10% residue (materials that we can't recycle) in our residential recycling materials that is sent to the landfill.
Bob Coyle –
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Dear Ms. Snowdon,
Unfortunately providing twice per week trash collection during the summer and once per week collection during the cooler months would not be cost effective. Every spring we would need to recruite and train new employees who would work for the summer and then would be laid off in the winter and the following spring we would be hiring new employees again. We would also need to have more trucks for the summer that would then just sit for six months of the year but would still need to be paid for in the rates that we charge to residents. It simply would not be cost effective.
Bob Coyle –
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