McLean County registered its highest recycling rate ever last year, according to new data from the Ecology Action Center.
Nearly 48% of all municipal solid waste produced in the county did not go to a landfill. The overall increase in the recycling rate is modest, about 1 percentage point. From 2022 to 2023, the county saw an increase of 24,700 thousand tons of waste generated, or around 10%. The tonnage of recycled waste rose by about 12% in the same period. It is the first year the county has seen the amount of recycled solid waste top 100,000 tons — at 112,577 tons recycled.
Ecology Action Center Director Michael Brown said the five-year trend is more encouraging. The county is also ahead of the 32% national recycling average measured in 2018.
Brown said there was a drop in recycling of residential electronic waste and a big increase in business e-waste recycling.
"Which does coincide with this post-pandemic trend that more employees are working remotely. So, what are all these corporations doing with the computers in the offices their employees formerly used?" said Brown.
The amount of cathode ray tube (CRT) TV and monitor recycling went down last year. That's a sign the heavy lead-filled items are finally going out of use in people's homes.
"We knew for a long time, even when we were making good progress in recycling them 10 years ago or more, the experts were telling us, oh no! You still have at least 10 years before a meaningful decline. We're finally there. And I'm happy," said Brown.
He noted the drop in residential e-waste recycling can be accounted for by the sunset of CRT use because the volume is by weight, and older TVs are a lot heavier than ones produced today.
“We are seeing, over the past two years in particular, nearly a 300% increase in total electronic waste being recycled,” said Brown. “At the same time, we’re seeing over the past few years, a 36% decrease in residential e-waste being recycled.”
Plastics and food compost
Brown said recycling of plastics and food compost programs grew well above the overall recycling number.
Recycling fell in a couple areas such as compact fluorescent lightbulbs, as LED bulbs replace them in stores. Certain lumber and pallet recycling also dropped because of changes in construction and demolition recycling requirements.
One recycling trend Brown said he likes is an increase in so-called extended producer responsibility programs.
"The retailer and manufacturer are already charging you for the disposal because they're going to pay for it at the end," said Brown.
Such a program for batteries passed the Illinois General Assembly this spring, sponsored by state Rep. Sharon Chung of Bloomington and Sen. Dave Koehler of Peoria, who represent parts of McLean County.
Brown said future improvements in the recycling rate to hit the county goal of 60% recycling will come from educating people the center is not now reaching about what can be recycled and what cannot.
“We’re not necessarily reaching minority populations in the community very well,” Brown said. “We’re not reaching people, right now, as we do a lot of social media outreach. We’re not reaching people who are not on social media channels. Our messaging primarily is in English. We don’t reach people who speak primarily languages other than English. There are a lot of areas where we could still make an improvement,” said Brown.
Information on residential recycling, programs and disposal of other materials is available on the EAC’s website.
