Whenever you move to a new community, it can be hard to know how to recycle. Who takes it, what do they actually take, and why do acceptable materials vary from one community to the next?
Michael Brown is executive director of the Ecology Action Center in Normal. Brown said recycling companies determine what can be economically viable to recycle and that's why recyclable materials differ.
In the latest installment of WGLT's series Welcome Home, Brown explains how the nonprofit helped build a recycling program in Bloomington-Normal.
Interview has been edited for clarity.
Brown: We're really unique. I actually haven't found any similar organization anywhere else I've been, definitely not in the state of Illinois. But we are the nonprofit environmental agency for Bloomington-Normal and McLean County. We provide a wide variety of services and have information of education and outreach on a variety of environmental issues, such as solid waste and recycling. This is our core issue.
We've been working on solid waste and recycling since our founding in 1971. Back in the day, we actually provided the direct services of recycling. But that was long ago taken over by the municipalities. Today, we are the center for information on that so we can help new residents get set up with curbside recycling. We can help to learn what is and isn’t recyclable in our community.
WGLT: What are the most common questions you hear from the public about what the Ecology Action Center does? I suspect they're not just from people who are new to the community.
I think a lot of people, especially those who don't live in our community, but who are aware of us, the most common question I get is, 'How do we get an Ecology Action Center in my community?' since we are so unique. It's not just the recycling programs, it's household hazardous waste coordination. It's community composting, which is a dropoff composting service. We teach people how to do backyard composting, provide composting workshops.
How much of an impact has the center head do you feel in improving participation in recycling?
We do track, among other things, the annual waste generation rate for the community as well as the annual recycling rate. How much waste did we create as a community through all sectors, and then how much of that percentage was actually recycled? We track that annually and have for a few decades now. We do have good data showing a consistent trend upward in the amount recycled.
What about things like batteries, scrap metal, those types of things that people inquire about most frequently when they're not sure whether it can or can't be recycled?
I think those are good examples. Batteries for sure. I think paints always tend to be problematic, especially since there's different kinds of paints. You get your spray paint, which is an aerosol can, which given that compressed air is a hazardous item. You have oil-based paints, which are hazardous, but then you have latex paints which are not hazardous and actually can easily be disposed of by residents simply by drying it out and then putting in the trash, and so there is just a lot of variation in consumer products.
I think the next most common thing is just massive confusion over plastics recycling, and the various codes on plastics. We tell people to ignore the numbers. The numbers have always been misleading. They've never been universal, never been definitive. So we tell people instead to look at the shape of the plastic container. Is it a bottle, tub, jug or jar? If it's not, it's not recyclable.
Do you feel people's confusion about what can and can't be recycled is hurting your overall output? Because people simply don't know and they hear the phrase, "When in doubt, throw it out."
Correct. That is our mantra now, especially with the transition away from educating about plastic codes and numbers, and more in these shapes. We really want to simplify it. It is kind of a radical change in the messaging, which frustrates people sometimes. Because contamination has become such a tremendous issue with recycling, the amount of labor time cost it takes to sort out things that are not recyclable greatly hurts the value of recycling.
What other misconceptions are out there about environmental sustainability in Bloomington-Normal?
A big one is organics. There is a massive misconception that putting organics into a landfill is a harmless activity. People tell me on a regular basis, I can just throw them in the trash because that will break down and go away and not cause a problem as if that's just going to turn right back into soil because you put it into the landfill. In reality, landfills are designed to prevent decomposition landfills are designed to be stable environment.
Landfills are actually compacted to push out all the oxygen. Oxygen is a key variable that we need for the proper aerobic decomposition of organic waste. In the absence of that, either things don't break down, or they break down through an anaerobic process, which means without oxygen, which is with other microbes that then as a waste product, generate methane. Methane is 20 times more impactful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Throwing organic waste into the landfill is actually a pretty serious contributor to climate change. We want to get the word out that people should be composting. They should be recycling anything that's natural, organic where they can.
There's more recycling info available at RecycleBN.org and the Recycle Coach app.
