Column

Who will teach us how to recycle trash?

By C.T. BOWEN, Editor of Editorials
Published September 30, 2007

The younger offspring in our household recently sought parental assistance for the homework assigned him from a sixth-grade mathematics book.

Certainly hearing an adult mumble, "Hmmmm, that's a tough one" after each problem did little to enhance his educational experience. Good thing the high school-aged older brother was around to fill the knowledge void.

The momentary math phobia is not exclusive to journalists. It's prevalent in public service.

Consider these numbers. For every pound of metal, aluminum, glass or plastic recycled in Pasco County, more than 125 pounds of trash is delivered to the incinerator in Shady Hills. Unfortunately, the trash-burning plant can only combust 105 pounds of that solid waste.

Over the course of a year, that means Pasco has to get rid of 60,000 tons of trash that it cannot burn because its incinerator is at capacity. Meanwhile, the county's voluntary curbside blue bag recycling program generates only 3,000 tons of salvaged material.

So why is the county so hesitant to try to raise the recycling number in order to lower the so-called bypass number, trash it either has to bury locally or pay nearly $40 per ton to ship to Osceola County for disposal? That's $2.4-million a year if all 60,000 tons of bypass waste go there.

You need not be a baffled parent or a perplexed pupil to try to figure this one out. But, if you are a county commissioner, you skip it and move on to the next question.

That is the upshot of a meeting five days ago when the panel blessed a 20-year contract (to be reconsidered in four years and every five years thereafter) to send its excess trash to Osceola. There will be plenty to go around. The more than 60,000 tons a year that cannot be burned will increase to 234,000 tons by the end of the contract if the growth rate holds at 2 percent a year.

The most key figure, however, is this: Sending trash somewhere else comes with a price tag of $62 per household per year for the next two decades, or exactly the price we pay now for the annual solid waste assessment.

If you talk about improved recycling, county staffers immediately start erecting the road blocks with discussions of franchise agreements with trash haulers, higher rates, recycling centers, and the million-dollar price of buying plastic recycling bins for every household in the county. It's easier to say 62 bucks a year takes care of things and be done with it.

These are not new discussions. In May, commissioners sat for a workshop on solid waste and a majority managed to kill the idea of curbside bins. County Administrator John Gallagher, however, said he would meet with the haulers, who had just won a rate increase, to discuss other options including handing out free blue bags to every homeowner to encourage recycling.

More expensive bills from the haulers arrived in the meantime. I'm still waiting for my blue bags.

Not all commissioners are party to this reticence. Commissioner Jack Mariano supports an aggressive recycling program and is researching Polk County's successful effort. Commissioner Michael Cox thinks recycling should be mandatory.

"We need to stop talking about it and start doing it," he said Tuesday.

Commissioners Ann Hildebrand, Ted Schrader and Pat Mulieri do not share their enthusiasm.

Schrader's large east Pasco district is rural and many homes do not have curbside pickup of trash and recyclables. Hildebrand's frame of reference is shaped by the public moaning that accompanied the origination of the blue bag program in the early 1990s. Mulieri is harder to figure. She spring-boarded into public office as an environmental activist campaigning to help keep Gowers Corner "clean and green" when a chlorine processing plant had been proposed there. She routinely touts the efforts of school and youth recycling projects.

Maybe recycling is like that bedeviling sixth-grade math. We all learned how to do it when we were kids, but decades later, the lessons have been forgotten.

Unfortunately, there is no high school student on standby to bail us out. Commissioners must be willing to serve that role.

[Last modified September 29, 2007, 21:10:51]